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i 



A HISTORY OF THE 

Protestant Reformation 



IN 



ENGLAND & IRELAND 

Written in 1824-1827 by 
WILLIAM COBBETT 



A NEW EDITION 
REVISED WITH NOTES AND PREFACfi 

BY 
FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET, D.D., O.^B. 

AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION, 



NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO: 
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 






■/^^/^ 



ff 



PREFACE. 



William Cobbett, the author of The History of the Protestant 
Refor77tation^ a new edition of which is here published, needs no 
introduction. His name, writes Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, is that 
" of a man, who, whatever his fauhs, must be considered, by every 
Englishman Avho loves our literature or studies our history, as one 
of the most remarkable illustrations of his very remarkable time." 
Born on the 9th of March, 1766, of poor parents, near Farnham in 
Hampshire, William Cobbett quickly aspired to something higher 
than that for which the circumstances of his country life promised 
to afford him scope. From the task of frightening birds from the 
turnip fields, and weeding the walks and flower-beds in the garden 
of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham Castle, in which his boy- 
hood was spent, he made his v/ay to London at the age of seven- 
teen. Here for a brief time he was engaged as a lawyei-'s clerk, 
but finding the occupation not to his taste, he enlisted in a regi- 
ment intended for Nova Scotia. During the period of nearly eight 
years in which he served in the ranks, he acquired what he always 
regarded as his most valuable possession, a thorough knowledge 
of the English language. " I learned grammar," he says himself, 
"when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The 
edge of my berth or that of the guard-bed was my seat to study 
f n, my knapsack was my bookcase, a bit of board lying on my lap 

v;/ is my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like 
'; year of my life." 

\ We are not here concerned with following the varied career of 



iv Preface, 

our author, and only refer to the early portion of it to show that he 
was intimately acquainted with the condition of the lower classes 
in England at the time when he wrote his History of the Protest- 
ant Reformation. When the letters, in which form the history 
first appeared, were written, it required great courage and deter- 
mination to undertake so unpopular a task as that of attacking the 
establishment of Protestantism, and even of pointing out that 
much could be said, and ought in all fairness to be said, for the 
Catholic side of the question. Proposals fc. '~ ,cnolic emancipa- 
tion were then much discussed, and it was in "the heat of th«| 
contest and cry against the Catholics " that Cobbett boldly stepped 
forth and called the Reformation " a devastation," and proclaimed 
"the Protestant religion to have been established by gibbet: 
racks, and ripping knives." 

The merit of the work as a history has been much discusse 
and frequently denied, even by those who might be tempted to 
take Cobbett's conclusions as in the main correct. The words of 
Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer on the subject may be quoted : " The 
History of the Protestant Reformation," he writes, " turned out a 
more important production than was ever contemplated by the 
author, whose chief aim seems to have been a contemptuous 
defiance to all the religious and popular feehngs in England. The 
work, however, was taken up by the Catholics, translated into 
various languages and widely circulated throughout Europe. The 
authoi-'s great satisfaction seems to consist in calling Queen Eliza- 
beth ' Bloody Queen Bess,' and Mary, ' Good Queen Mary,' and 
he doubtless brought forward much that could be said against the 
one and to favour the other, which Protestant writers had kept 
back ; but his two volumes still are not to be regarded as a serious 
history, but rather as a party pamphlet, and no more racy and 
eloquent party pamphlet was ever written." 

How far the verdict of Sir H. Lytton Bulwer that the work in 
question is " not to be regarded as a serious history " is correct, 
must be left to the judgment of those who will take the trouble to 
rr.a.^3^e into the authority of Cobbett's statements of fact. For the 



% 
I 



Preface, v 

purpose of this edition I have been at some pains to enquire into 
the truth of the assertions made, and to set down the result in the 
shape of notes, either giving authorities which may be taken to 
bear out the writer's statements, or pointing out wherein in my 
opinion he was mistaken, or has somewhat misstated or exaggerated 
the bearing of some fact. I confess that I was surprised to find 
how few were the instances in which some satisfactory authority 
could not be found to bear out the picture presented in Cobbett's 
pages. In great measure the author evidently drew his materials 
from the History of England by Dr. John Lingard, a work that 
had been published not long before this History of the Protestant 
Reformation was undertaken. It is impossible to compare the two 
books without seeing that Cobbett must have had before him, and 
must have closely followed, Lingard's presentment of the facts with 
which he was immediately concerned. Not only is there a general 
accord between them, which cannot have been the result of mere 
chance, but in many places there is almost a verbal agreement. 

The fact that Cobbett has relied in the main upon so careful 
and, as is very generally allowed, so exact, calm and judicial a 
writer of history as Dr. Lingard, will probably be sufficient to cleat 
him in the opinion of most people from the reputation of being " a 
reckless perverter of facts," and his general history from the 
charge of being " a mere tissue of lies." The chief value of The 
History of the Protestant Refo7'77iation would seem, however, to lie, 
not in the actual accuracy of this or that fact, but in the general 
impression made upon the mind of the reader. The author's 
vigorous and graphic style presents a real picture of the results, 
so far as the people of England as a whole are concerned, of the 
revolution social as well as religious which is known as the Protes- 
tant Reformation. The genius of Cobbett instinctively realised 
that the religious changes in England in the sixteenth century, if 
not actually promoted by those in power for their own purposes, 
had certainly resulted in benefiting the rich to the detriment of 
their poorer brethren. In fact, wholly apart from the religious 
side of the question, or from any advantages which may be thought 



vi Preface. 



1 



I 



to have been secured by the triumph of Protestantism, the price 
paid for the change by the lower classes must in fairness be 
estimated as very considerable. Viewed merely in its social 
aspect, the English Reformation was in reality the rising of the 
rich against the poor. In the general upheaval which accom 
panied the labours of the Reformers to root up Catholicism from 
the soil of England, most of those in place and power were enabled 
to grow greater in wealth and position, whilst those who had befor^Bj 
but a small share in the good things of this world came in the pro- 
cess to have less. Their condition under the new order was visibly 
harder, till as a natural result of their misery there came forth 
many of the social sores which afflict society to the present day. 
What Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation chiefly 
displays, then, is this aspect of the religious changes in the 
sixteenth century. His pages help us to realise the fact that the 
Reformation effected, besides a change in religious beliefs and 
practices, a wide and permanent division in the great body politic. 
The supposed purification of doctrine and practice was brought 
about only at the cost of, as it were, driving a wedge well into the 
heart of the nation, which at once and for all divided the rich from 
the poor, and established the distinction which still exists between 
the classes and the masses. 

Speaking of the condition of the poor in the middle ages, Bishop 
Stubbs declares that '* there is very little evidence to show that 
our forefathers, in the middle ranks of life, desired to set any 
impassable boundary between class and class. The great barons 
would probably at any period have shown disinclination to admit 
new men on terms of equality to their own order ; but this disin- 
clination was overborne by the royal policy of promoting useful 
servants, and the country knight was always regarded as a membei 
of the noble class, and his position was continually strengthened 
by intermarriage with the baronage. The city magnate again 
formed a link between the country squire, and the tradesman and \ 
the yeoman were in position and in blood close akin. Even the 
villein might by learning a craft set h^s foot on the ladder oi 



Preface. vil 

promotion ; but the most certain way to rise was furnished by 
education, and by the law of the land ' every man or woman, of 
what state or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or 
daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within 
the realm." ^ 

It is obvious that the various measures which formed integral 
portions of the great scheme of the Reformation, although not 
ostensibly aimed at breaking up the essential unity of a Christian 
kingdom governed on Catholic principles, in reality had that 
effect. The dissolution of the monastic houses, the confiscation of 
the property of the guilds, hospitals and alms-houses, and even 
the introduction of a married clergy, were all calculated to injure 
the poor and deprive them of their inheritance, or what by imme- 
morial custom they had come to regard as such. In particular 
the possessions of the monastic houses are popularly understood 
to be, as an old writer expresses it, " oblations to the Lord " and 
" the patrimony of the poor, to be bestowed accordingly." In them 
the monks " made such provision daily for the people that stood 
in need thereof, as sick, sore, lame, or otherwise impotent, that 
none or very few lacked relief in one place or another." And 
although it may be questioned whether the time-honoured methods 
of dealing with poverty would have stood the test of greatly 
increased demands, still it is a matter of history that the dissolu- 
tion of the monastic houses did in fact immediately produce 
overwhelming poverty and distress, which at once necessitated 
legislation as novel as it was harsh, and further, that the con- 
dition of pauperism as distinguished from that of poverty may 
certainly be traced for its origin to that event. That it could not 
fail to impoverish a large portion of the people must be obvious 
to anyone acquainted with the circumstances of the case ; and 
whatever view may be taken as to the utility of monastic obser- 
vances or of the advisability of the extensive charities distributed 
by the religious houses, it is obvious that no benefit to the poorer 

' Co'^tituiional History of England, iii., 655 



viii Preface. 

part of the population of the country could possibly result from 
stopping the flow of charity altogether, by confiscating the revenues 
of the monasteries and dividing them among the favourites of 
the crown, or lightening the burdens of the rich by applying them 
to the relief of general taxation. The old writer before quoted, 
speaking at the close of the sixteenth century, when the results 
of the policy of destruction were manifest, points out how by 
means of the property filched from the poor, the rich had mounted 
to place and power, whilst the former, deprived of their protectors 
and inheritance, had sunk deeper into the hopeless slough of 
pauperism. The suppressions "made of yeomen and artificers 
gentlemen, and of gentlemen knights, and so forth upward, and 
of the poorest sort stark beggars." 

It seems quite clear that not only were the results of the sup 
pression of the religious houses at once manifest in the wide 
increase of poverty, but it was, even at the time, ascribed to this 
cause. An old document, certainly written before the close of the 
reign of Henry VIII. by one favourable to the religious changes, 
makes it clear that this was the popular opinion. " The priests," 
he writes, " mark such universal extremity and increase of misery, 
poverty, dearth, beggars, thieves and vagabonds, that it is hardly 
now possible to longer bear it," and when asked the cause for all 
this they reply, " What marvel is it, though we have no money, 
how many thousand pounds a year go to London for the rents of 
abbey lands, for first fruits, for tenths, &c., besides the innumerable 
treasure that hath come to the King's Highness by the purchase 
of the plate and implements of the same houses, all of which here- 
tofore was wont to be spent here in the country for victuals 
amongst us. Surely, surely, good neighbours, we have never had 
a merry nor wealthy world since abbeys were put down and this 
new learning brought in place." ^ 

It is necessary only to point to the case of the great alienation 
of tithes from all religious purposes at the time of the suppression 

2 Royal MS., 17 B xxxv. f. 9 a. 



I 



Preface, Ix 

of the religious houses to call attention to one obvious way in 
which the poor were deprived of their natural rights. A very large 
portion of the parochial tithes had been in the course of ages 
appropriated, as it is called, to some one or other religious house. 
Without defending the practice, which is obviously open to great 
abuses, the religious houses receiving such tithes were of course 
bound, and did in fact fulfil the obligation, to provide for the 
spiritual necessities of the parishes so appropriated to them, and 
to act as almoners for that portion of the tithes which custom and 
law had assigned for the assistance of the needy. From the 
earliest days of English Christianity the care of the helpless poor 
was regarded as a religious obligation. " S. Gregory, in his in- 
structions to S. Augustine," writes Bishop Stubbs, " had reminded 
him of the duty of a bishop to set apart for the poor a fourth part 
of the income of his church ; and in 1342 Archbishop Stratford 
ordered that in all cases of appropriation a portion of the tithe 
should be set apart for the relief of the poor. The legislation of 
the witenagemotes of Ethelred bore the same mark, — a third 
portion of the tithe that belonged to the Church was to go to God's 
poor ; it was enjoined on all God's servants that they should 
comfort and feed the poor. Even in the reign of Henry I. the 
king was declared to be the kinsman and advocate of the poor." ^ 

By the suppression of the religious houses and by the subsequent 
religious changes, the poor came to have a less acknowledged right 
to a share in the Church revenues. The tithes which had been 
appropriated to the monastic estabhshments were treated like the 
rest of the ordinary lands and revenues, and being granted away 
by the king passed altogether into lay hands, without regard to 
the obligation of contributing out of them the portion intended for 
the support of the poor. The result was that the new possessors 
of tithes " which belonged to vicarages," did not " think they were 
more bound to contribute on this account more to the poor than 
others," and thus these poor were, and in fact still are, deprived of 

* ConUitutional History of England, iii., 64'' 



X Preface. 

their share in the tithes which had been appropriated to the 
monastic houses and were confiscated by Henry VIII. At a some- 
what later period the introduction of marriage for the parochial 
clergy obviously still further diminished the portion of tithe coming 
to the poor, since the clergyman, having to support a family out of 
his dues, had less to spare for those of his parishioners whose 
wants had been supplied previously, in some measure at least, 
out of these. 

A still more glaring and, if possible, more unjustifiable instance of 
the way in which during the period of religious changes in England 
no respect was paid to the rights of the poor may be seen in the 
confiscation of the property of the guilds, contemplated under 
Henry VIII. and carried into effect in the first days of Edward VI. 
Whatever may have been the special objects to promote which 
these voluntary societies were founded, whether for trade, social 
or religious purposes, they all made the performance of the Chris- 
tian duty of charity to the poor a necessary part of their regular 
work. " In the frith-guild of London," writes Bishop Stubbs, " the 
remains of the feasts were dealt to the needy for the love of God ; 
the maintenance of the poorer members of the craft was, as in the 
friendly societies of our own time, one main object in the institution 
of the craft guilds ; and even those later religious guilds, in which 
the chief object seems at first sight, as in much of the charitable 
machinery of the present day, to have been the acting of mysteries 
and the exhibition of pageants, were organised for the relief of 
distress as well as for conjoint and mutual prayer. It was with 
this idea that men gave large estates in land to the guilds, which 
down to the Reformation formed an organised administration of 
relief" The same weighty writer then goes on to declare that 
" the confiscation of the guild property, together with that of the 
hospitals, was one of the great wrongs which were perpetrated 
under Edward VL, and, whatever may have been the results o' 
the stoppage of monastic charity, was one unquestionable cause of 
the growth of town pauperism." ^ 

* Constitutional History of England^ iii., 648. 



I 



Preface, xi 

Whilst fiilly allowing that by the seizure of the property of the 
guilds a grave injustice was perpetrated on those for whom the 
charities disbursed by them were intended, few writers have yet 
realised how deliberate that act of injustice really was. It is often 
stated that the charitable funds were not to be distinguished from 
the revenues appropriated for religious rites for masses for the 
dead, &c., which were, on the assured ascendancy of the Protestant 
principles of the Reformation, declared to be superstitious practices ; 
and unfortunately, whilst confiscating the property intended for 
the support of ceremonies now declared to be illegal, the state 
unwittingly swept into the public coffers that intended for the poor. 
However gladly one would believe this to have been the actual 
state of the case, original documents in the Record Office prove 
that the plunder of the poor by those in power was a deliberate 
and premeditated act. In many instances the report of the com- 
missioners sent to inquire into the possessions of the guilds show 
that they fully noted and proposed to exempt from confiscation all 
portions of the corporate property of any guild charged with pay- 
ment in behalf of the poor. In every instance where such a 
proposal was made, the crown official through whose hands the 
report has passed has drawn his pen through this humane recom- 
mendation, and intimated that the crown, not recognising any such 
right on the part of the poor, would take possession of the entire 
property. 

A no less real, though perhaps less obvious, injustice was done 
to the poorer portion of the population at the time of the religious 
changes in England by the destruction of schools and colleges, 
and the gradual alienation of funds intended for the purpose 
of supplying education to those who could not otherwise 
obtain it, to assist in educating the children of those whose 
circumstances would fully enable them to support that burden. 
For a time most of the schools were closed, without any pro- 
vision being made for carrying on the education hitherto given 
in the monastic houses. In the universities the results were 
immediately felt. At Cambridge it was feared that die de- 



xil Preface. 

struction of the religious houses, which had hitherto prepared 
students for their college course and supported poor scholars 
during their training, would annihilate learning altogether. At 
Oxford, although the beneficed clergy were enjoined to find " an 
exhibition to maintain one scholar or more," the result was as 
obvious as in the sister university, for from the first the injunction 
had no more effect than that laid on the new owners of monastic 
property to maintain the united hospitality of the dispossessed 
monks. Deprived of the assistance necessary to enable them to 
obtain the first beginnings of an education, and thus to set. their 
feet upon the first rung of the ladder which in the middle ages had 
raised so many from a state of poverty to place and power, the poor 
were unable to claim even their share in the emoluments with 
which the piety of our English forefathers had endowed the colleges 
and halls of the universities, and which were chiefly intended for 
the poorer portions of the population. 

Latimer loudly lamented the changed circumstances so far as 
this was concerned. " In those days," he says, looking back to 
the time before the suppression of the monastic houses, " what did 
they when they helped the scholars ? Marry ! they maintained and 
gave them livings that were very papists and professed the Pope's 
doctrine ; and now that the knowledge of God's Word is brought 
to light, and many earnestly study and labour to set it forth, now 
almost no man helpeth to maintain them." And again, " truly it is 
a pitiful thing to see schools so neglected ; every Christian ought 
to lament the same. . . . Schools are not maintained, scholars have 
no exhibitions. Very few there be that help poor scholars." Here 
again, in the matter of education, it was the poor who were called 
upon to pay the price for the religious changes of the sixteenth 
century. 

To turn to another and even larger question. The dissolution of 
the monasteries and the confiscation of the property of the chantries 
and guilds resulted in the transfer of a large amount of land into 
the hands of new proprietors. Possibly the extent of territory 
which thus changed hands was above rather than under 2,000,000 



Prejace. xiii 

acres. The mere change of ownership was little compared with 
the result to the poorer tenants of the estates, for the royal policy 
in parcelling the, confiscated lands among his needy courtiers was 
to create a monopoly in land. As the new possessors had fre- 
quently paid large sums for their grants their own interest prompted 
them to make the most of their purchases, which they did by 
raising the rents paid by the farmers and encroaching upon what 
had hitherto been regarded as common rights. It is very gener- 
ally allowed that the old monastic and religious corporations were 
easy landlords. Not being subject to demise, such bodies, con- 
tinuing to dwell in the midst of their tenants, dealt with them 
according to immemorial custom. It is custom, as Mill points out, 
especially in regard to rent, which " is the most powerful protector 
of the weak against the strong, their sole protector where there are 
no laws or government adequate to the purpose." In the change 
of ownership effected during the religious revolution of the sixteenth 
century no respect whatever was paid to custom. That barrier 
" which even in the most oppressed condition of mankind," in the 
opinion of the philosopher, " tyranny is forced in some degree to 
respect " was thrown down, and the weak were left in the power of 
the strong. 

The enclosure of the common lands, and the consequent injustice 
done to those who from time immemorial had been possessed of 
common rights, is well recognised as an immediate result of the 
change in ownership at this period. So, too, is the rack-renting to 
which the new possessors had recourse in order to make the most 
of their grants or purchases. The absolute change of tenure, which 
appears in certain instances, may be illustrated from the Durham 
Halmote Rolls published by the Surtees Society. " It is hardly a 
figure of speech," writes Mr. Booth in the preface to this volume, 
"to say we have in (these rolls) village life photographed. The 
dry record of tenures is peopled by men and women who occupied 
them, whose acquaintance we make in these records under the 
various phases of village life. We see them in their tofts surrounded 
by their crofts, with their gardens of pot-herbs. We see how they 



xiv Preface, 

ordered the affairs of the village, when summoned by the bailiff to 
the vill to consider matters which affected the common weal of the 
community. We hear of their trespasses and wrong doings, and 
how they were remedied or punished ; of their strifes and conten- 
tions, and how they were repressed ; of their attempts, not always 
ineffective, to grasp the principle of co-operation, as shown by their 
by-laws ; of their relations with the Prior, who represented the 
convent and alone stood in relation of lord. He appears always 
to have dealt with his tenants, either in person or through his 
officers, with much consideration ; and in the imposition of fines 
we find them invariably tempering justice with mercy." 

In fact, as the picture of mediaeval village life among the tenants 
of the Durham monastery is displayed in the pages of this inter- 
esting volume, it would seem almost as if one was reading of some 
Utopia of dreamland. Many of the things that in these days 
advanced politicians would desire to see introduced into the village 
communities of modern England, to relieve the deadly dulness of 
country life, were seen in Durham and Cumberland in full working 
order in pre-Reformation days. Local provisions for public health 
and general convenience are evidenced by the watchful vigilance of 
the village officials over the water supplies, the care taken to 
prevent the fouling of useful streams, and stringent by-laws as to 
the common place for clothes washing and the times for emptying 
and cleansing ponds and mill dams. Labour was lightened and 
the burdens of life eased by co-operation on an extensive scale. A 
common mill ground the corn, and the flour was baked into bread 
at a common oven. A common smith worked at a common forge, 
and common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and 
cattle of various tenants when pastured on the fields common to 
the whole village community. The pages of the volume contain 
numerous instances of the kindly consideration for their tenants 
which characterized the monastic proprietors, and the relation 
between them was rather that of rent-charges than of absolute 
ownership. In fact, as the editor of the volume says, " Notwith- 
standing the rents, duties, and services, and the fine paid on 



Preface, xv 

entering, the inferior tenants of the Prior had a beneficial interest 
in their holdings, which gave rise to a recognised system of tenant- 
right, which we may see growing into a customary right, the only 
limitation of the tenant's right being inability, from poverty or other 
cause, to pay rent or perform the accustomed services." 

When the monastery of Durham was suppressed and its place 
taken by a Dean and Chapter, it was, by the middle of Eliza- 
beth's reign, found that the change was gravely detrimental to 
the interests of the tenants, and that the new body soon made 
it plain that they had no intention of respecting prescriptive 
rights. This is made clear by a document printed in the same 
volume, about which the editor says : " A review of the Halmote 
Rolls leaves no room for doubt that the tenants, other than 
those of the demesne lands, during the period covered by the 
text, had a recognised tenant-right in their holdings, which was 
ripening into a customary freehold estate ; and we might have 
expected to find, in the vills or townships in which the Dean and 
Chapter possessed manorial rights, the natural outcome of this 
tenant-right in the existence of copyhold or customary freehold 
estates at the present time, as we find in the manors of the 
see of Durham. It is a well-known fact, however, that there are 
none. The reason is, that soon after the foundation of the 
Cathedral body, the Dean and Chapter refused to recognise a 
customary estate in their tenants." 

What happened at Durham may safely be taken as an example 
of the vast confiscation of prescriptive rights which at the time of 
the religious changes went on all over England. It was this side 
of the question which chiefly appealed to William Cobbett, and* 
which he seeks to illustrate in his History of the Reformation 
He was not directly concerned with the change of religion as a 
religious question, but the object for which he used all the vigour 
of his powerful pen was to get Englishmen to realise the price the 
nation had been called upon to pay to secure those changes in 
faith and practice. 

In the present edition of Cobbett's History of the Protestant 



xvl Preface. 

Reformation^ the second part, which catalogued the names of the 
various religious houses suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII., is 
omitted altogether. The rest is printed as it appeared in previous 
editions, with one or two slight modifications. The letter form is 
altered to chapter headings, the author's nicknames have been 
freely cut out, and an occasional strong or coarse expression is re- 
placed by another less objectionable word or phrase. These, and 
the omission of some few allusions to people and events telling, 
perhaps, at the time when Cobbett wrote, but altogether useless 
now and unimportant in themselves, are the chief changes which 
teemed called for in revising the text for this edition. 

M A. Gasquet. 




SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

CHAPTER I.— Introduction ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ i 



CHAPTER II.— Henry VIII.— The Divorce. 

Origin of the Catholic Church — History of the Church, in 
England, down to the time of the "Reformation" — Monasteries 
and Monks— Beginning of the " Reformation" by King Henry 
VIII « .« 21 



CHAPTER III.— Henry VIII.— The Royal Supremacy. 

Resistance to the King's measures — Effects of abolishing the 
Pope's supremacy — Death of Sir Thomas More and Bishop 
Fisher— Horrible murders of Catholics— Luther and the new 
religion — Burning of Catholics and Protestants at the same fire 
— Execrable conduct of Cranmer— The title ** Defender of the 
Faith" 50 

CHAPTER IV.— Henry Will.— {continued). 

Tyranny of Henry VIII. — Butchery of the Countess of Salis- 
bury — Plunder — Celibacy of the Clergy— Comments upon the 
Bishops of Winchester — Hume's charges against the Monks, and 
Bishop Tanner's answer ... ... ... ... ... ... 76 

CHAPTER v.— Henry VIII.— The Dissolution of the 

Monasteries. 

Authorities relating to the effects of monastic institutions — 
The great utility of monasteries and the political wisdom in which 
they were founded — The appointment of Thomas Cromwell as 
royal vice-gerent — His proceedings in the work of plunder and 
devastation— The first Act of Parliament for the suppression of 
the monasteries ... ,« .», ..« ^ lOj 



xviii Summary of Contents. 

CHAPTER VI.— Henry N\\\.— [continued).' fagb 

Confiscation of the monasteries — Base and cruel means of 
doing this — The sacking and defacing of the country — Breaking 
up of the tomb of Alfred the Great — The King's wives, Anne of 
Cleves and Catherine Howard — Death of Thomas Cromwell — 
Death of Henry VIII. .^ .« .« .^ .^ .« 123 



CHAPTER VII.— Edward VI. 

Edward VI.— The will of Henry VIII, — Perjury of the execu- 
tors -The new Church, " by law established " -Robbery of the 
churches — Insurrections of the people — Treason of Cranmer 
and his associates — Death of the King .« ,^ ... ... 151 



CHAPTER VIII.— Mary. 

Accession of Queen Mary — Her mild and benevolent laws — The 
nation reconciled to the Church — The Queen's great generosity 
and piety — Mary's marriage with Philip II. of Spain — The laws 
and conduct against heretics — Fox's ** Martyrs ".« ... ... 180 



CHAPTER IX.— Mary and Elizabeth. 

Mary at war with France — Capture of Calais by the French — 
Death of Queen Mary — Remarks on her acts — Queen Elizabeth. 
A reason for her being Protestant — Her cruel and bloody laws 
relative to religion — Her perfidy towards France — The disgrace 
she brought upon her government and her country by this per- 
fidy — Her base and perpetual surrender of Calais «« ... 212 



CHAPTER X.—Ei.iZABETH—{confmue(I). 

The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew — A tail-piece to it : 
the projected marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou 
— Elizabeth's favourites and ministers : Leicester, Cecil, Wal- 
singham, Paulet — History and murder of Mary Stuart, Queen of 
Scotland .^ .^ .« ... .« .«. ,« ... 239 



CHAPTER XI. —ELiZABETH—iconfmugd), 

Hypocrisy of Elizabeth on the death of Mary Stuart — The 
Spanish Armada — Elizabeth's poor-laws and her barbarous 
treatment of Ireland — Elizabeth's " Inquisition " — Terrible per- 
secution of the Catholics — Racks and tortures employed by the 
Queen's agents — The Queen's death 265 



Summary of Contents. xix 

CHAPTER XII.— The Stuarts. fagb 

Accession of James I. — Continued persecution of Catholics — 
The Gunpowder Plot — A contrast between this and Protestant 
plots — Charles I., his accession ; the Puritan revolt ; his •' Mar- 
tyrdom " — Oliver Cromwell's accession to power — The Second 
or "thorough godly" Reformation — The Restoration of Charles 
II. — Various plots ascribed to Catholics — Ingratitude of the King 
towards them — Reign of James II. — His endeavours to intro- 
duce general toleration— His imprudence — William of Orange 
invited over to bring in the *' glorious " Revolution 289 

CHAPTER XIII.— The Charges against James II., and 
THEIR Refutation. 

The Third Reformation, the "glorious" Revolution— The 
Revolution bore hard on the Catholics — Charges preferred by 
Parliament against James II. — Comments upon these charges 
and the refutation of them — Remarks upon Sidney, Russell, and 
other Protestant patriots — The Habeas Corpus Act passed in 
the reign of James II.— The Settlement of the American 
Colonies ... ... .» ... 312 

CHAPTER XIV.— Results of the Reformation. 

Triumph of William III. in England and Ireland — The War 
with France a "no popery" war — The war led to the great in- 
crease of taxation — Ilence the origin of the National Debt, of 
Banks and Stock -jobbing, and of the Excise— Strictures on 
Bishop Burnet — The Septennial Bill due, as its preamble says, 
to a " restless and popish faction" — Taxation led to the Ameri- 
can Revolution — Charges preferred by the Americans against 
George III « „ 332 

CHAPTER XV.— Results of the Reformation— (^<?;?^ma««). 

The American Revolution the first cause of Catholic relief — 
Enumeration of the penal laws against Catholics, and remarks 
thereon— The first relaxation due to fear — The French Revo- 
lution was " Reformation " pushed to the fullest extent — The 
second relaxation due to fear — The Penal Code in 1826 — 
Results of the " Reformation " on religion ... 354 



CHAPTER XVI. — Impoverishment and Degradation of the 
People by the Reformation. 

Former population, wealth, power, freedom, and happiness 
of England — Comparison with modern times — The progress of 
pauperism — Conclusion -Motives for writing the book 373 



Notice. — Errata, 

Two editions of Lingard's History of England have been used in the 
notes to this book. The references are to be made to the sixth edition 
revised (London, Dolman, 1854-5), unless otherwise specially noted. In 
the corrections here set out the first number indicates the page of this 
book, the second the number of the note ; the numbers after the bars 
indicate the volume and page of the sixth edition of Lingard's History. 

77. I. — V. 67: 77. 2.— v. Ill : jy. 3. — v. 1 1 1- 1 12, and note: yS. 4.— 
V. Ill : 7<5*. 5. — V. 113 : 81. 9. — v. 62 : 144. 14. — v. 68 : T46. 16. — v. 70: 
J4g. 18. — V. 98 : 750. 20. — V. 103-104 : 757. 10. — v. 180 : 164. 13. — v. 
180, and note: 173. 21. — v. 185, ^z^^"^; 176. 26. — v. 186: 186. 6.— v. 199: 
J87. 8.— V. 197: 188. 10. — v. 198: i8g. II.— V. 220-221 : igo. 14. — v. 
222: igi. 15. — V. 222: igi. 16.— V. 221, and note: igj. 19. —v. 243: 
ig^. 21. — V. 243: ig4. 21. — V. 242: igj. 22. — v. 243-244: igy. 24. — 
V. 212-213 • ^97- 25. — V. 207, seqq. : igg. 27. — v. 209 : 20^. 30. — v. 231 : 
so^. 31. — v. 231 {bis): 210. 37.— v. 235: 211. 38, — V, 235: 211. 39. — 
V. 237: 213. 2.— V. 258: 2j6. 5. — V. 259: 216. 5. — \. 239: 218. 6.- 
V.259: 2ig. 8.— vi. 3 : 222^ 11. — vi. 5: 224. 14.— vi. 7 : 226. 16. — vi. ii .- 
264. 26. — vi. 223 and 225. 



A HISTORY 

OF THE 



Protestant Reformation. 



CHAPTER L 

Introduction. 



1. We have recently^ seen a rescript from the Kin^ to 
the Bishops, the object of which was to cause them to call 
upon their Clergy to cause collections of money to be 
made in the several parishes throughout England, for the 
purpose of promoting what is called the *' religious educa- 
tion " of the people. 

2. We shall further have an opportunity of asking what 
sort of a Clergy this must be, who, while they swallow in 
England and Ireland about eight millions a year, call upon 
their parishioners for money to be sent to a wine and spirit 
merchant, that he may cause the children of the country 
to have a "religious education." But, not to stop, at 
present, for this purpose, pray observe, my friends, that 
this society for "promoting Christian knowledge" is con- 
tinually putting forth publications, the object of which is 
to make the people of England believe that the Catholic 
religion is " idolatrous and damnable ; " and that, of course, 
the one-third part of the whole of our fellow-subjects are 



This was written in November, 1824. 



' 2 

idolaters, and are destined to eternal perdition, and that 
they, of course, ought not to enjoy the same rights that we 
Protestants enjoy. These calumniators know well that 
this same Catholic religion was, for nine hundred years, 
the only Christian religion known to our forefathers. This 
is a fact which they cannot disguise from intelligent 
persons ; and, therefore, they, like the Protestant Clergy, 
are constantly applauding the change which took place 
about two hundred years ago, and which change goes 
by the name of the Reformation. 

3. Before we proceed further, let us clearly understand 
the meaning of these words: — Catholic, Protestant, and 
Reformation. Catholic means universal, and the religion 
which takes this epithet was called universal because all 
Christian people of every nation acknowledged it to be the 
only true religion, and because they all acknowledged one 
and the same head of the Church, and this was the Pope, 
who, though he generally resided at Rome, was the head 
of the Church in England, in France, in Spain, and, in 
short, in every part of the world where the Christian 
religion was professed. But there came a time, when 
some nations, or rather, parts of some nations, cast off the 
authority of the Pope, and of course no longer acknow- 
ledged him as the head of the Christian Church. These 
nations, or parts of nations, declared, or protested, against 
the authority of their former head, and also against the 
doctrines of that Church, which until now had been the 
only Christian Church. They therefore called themselves 
Protestors or Protestants ; and this is now the appellation 
given to all who are not Catholics. As to the word Refor- 
mation, it means an alteration for the better ; and it would 
have been hard indeed if the makers of this great alteration 
could not have contrived to give it a good name. 

4. Now, my friends, a fair and honest inquiry will teach 
us that this was an alteration greatly for the worse ; that 
the " Reformation," as it is called, was engendered in lust, 



brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and 
fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent 
English and Irish blood ; and that as to its more remote 
consequences, they are, some of them, now before us, in 
that misery, that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, 
that everlasting wrangling and spite, which now stare us 
in the face, and stun our ears at every turn, and which the 
'' Reformation " has given us in exchange for the ease, and 
happiness, and harmony, and Christian charity, enjoyed 
so abundantly and for so many ages by our Catholic 
forefathers 

5. Were there, for the entering on this inquiry, no motive 
other than that of a bare love of justice, that motive alone 
would, I hope, be sufficient with the far greater part of 
Englishmen. But, besides this abstract motive, there is 
another of great and pressing practical importance. A full 
third part of our fellow-subjects are still Catholics ; and, 
when we consider that the principles of the " Reformation" 
are put forward as the ground for excluding them from 
their civil rights, and also as the ground for treating them 
in a manner the most scornful, despiteful, and cruel ; when 
we consider that it is not in human nature for men to 
endure such treatment without wishing for, and without 
seeking, opportunities for taking vengeance ; when we con- 
sider the present formidable attitude of foreign nations, 
naturally our foes, and how necessary it is that we should 
all be cordially united, in order to preserve the inde- 
pendence of our country ; when we consider that such 
union is utterly impossible as long as one-third part of the 
people are treated as outcasts, because, and only because, 
they have, in spite of two hundred years of persecutions 
unparalleled, adhered to the religion of their and of our 
fathers ; when we consider these things, that fair and 
honest inquiry, on which a bare Ipve of justice might well 
induce us to enter, presses itself upon us as a duty which 
we owe to ourselves, our children, and our country. 



4 

6. If you will follow me in this inquiry, I will first show 
you how this thing called the ''Reformation" began; what 
it arose out of; and then I will show you its progress, how 
it marched on, plundering, devastating, inflicting torments 
on the people, and shedding their innocent blood. I will 
trace it downward through all its stages, until I show you 
its natural result in the present indescribable misery of the 
labouring classes in England and Ireland, and in that 
odious and detestable system which has made Jews and 
paper-money makers the real owners of a large part of the 
estates in this kingdom. 

7. But, before I enter on this series of deeds and of con- 
sequences, it is necessary to offer you some observations oi 
a more general nature, and calculated to make us doubt, at 
least, of the truth of what we have heard against the 
Catholic religion. Our minds have been so completely 
filled with the abuse of this religion, that at first we can 
hardly bring ourselves to listen to anything said in defence 
of it, or in apology for it. Those whom you will, by and 
by, find in possession of the spoils of the Catholic Church 
and, indeed, of those of the Catholic nobles and gentlemen, 
not forgetting those of the poor ; these persons have always 
had the strongest possible motive for causing the people to 
be brought up in the belief that the Catholic religion was, 
and is, something to inspire us with horror. From our very 
infancy, on the knees of our mothers, we have been taught 
to believe that to be a Catholic was to be a false, cruel and 
bloody wretch ; and " popery and slavery " have been rung 
in our ears, till, whether we looked on the Catholics in their 
private or their public capacity, we have inevitably come 
to the conclusion that they were everything that was 
vicious and vile. 

8. But, you may say, why should any body, and particu- 
larly our countrymen, take such pains to deceive us ? Why 
should they, for so many years, take the trouble to write 
and publish books of all sizes, from big folios down to half- 



I 



penny tracts, in order to make us think ill of this Catholic 
religion ? Now, my friends, take an instance in answer to 
this why. The immense property of the Catholic Church 
in Ireland, in which, mind, the poor had a share, was taken 
from the Catholics and given to the Protestant bishops 
and parsons. These have never been able to change the 
religion of the main body of the people of that country ; 
and there these bishops and parsons are enjoying the 
immense revenues without having scarcely any flocks. 
This produces great discontents, makes the country con- 
tinually in a state of ferment, causes enormous expenses to 
England, and exposes the whole kingdom to great danger in 
case of war. Now, if those who enjoy these revenues, and 
their close connections in this country, had not made us 
beHeve that there was something very bad, wicked and 
horrible in the Catholic religion, should we not, long ago, 
have asked why they put us to all this expense for keeping 
that religion down ? They never told us, and they never 
tell us, that this Catholic religion was the only religion 
known to our own forefathers for nine hundred years. If 
they had told us this, we should have said that it could not 
possibly have been so very bad a religion, and that it would 
be better to leave the Irish people still to enjoy it ; and 
that, since there were scarcely any Protestant flocks, i^ 
would be better for us all if the Church revenues were to 
go again to the original owners. 

9. Ah ! my friends ! here we have the real motive for all 
the abuse, all the hideous calumnies that have been heaped 
upon the Catholic religion, and upon all that numerous 
body of our fellow-subjects who adhere to that ancient 
faith. When you think of the power of this motive, you 
will not be surprised at the great and incessant pains that 
have been taken to deceive us. Even the Scripture itself 
has been perverted in order to blacken the Catholics. In 
books of all sizes and from the pulpit of every church we 
have been taught from our infancy that the " beast, the man 



of sin, and the scarlet whore," mentioned in the Revela- 
tions, were names which God Himself had given to the 
Pope ; and we have all been taught to believe of the 
Catholic Church that her worship was *' idolatrous," and 
that her doctrines were " damnable." 

lo. Now, let us put a plain question or two to ourselves, 
and to these our teachers ; and we shall quickly be able to 
form a just estimate of the modesty, sincerity, and consist- 
ency of these revilers of the Catholic religion. They will 
not, because they cannot, deny, that this religion was the 
only Christian religion in the world for fifteen hundred 
years after the death of Christ. They may say, indeed, 
that for the first three hundred years there was no Pope 
seated at Rome. But, then, for twelve hundred years 
there had been; and during that period all the nations of 
Europe, and some part of America, had become Christian, 
and all acknowledged the Pope as their head in religious 
matters ; and, in short, there was no other Christian 
Church known in the world, nor had any other ever been 
thought of. Can we believe then that Christ, who died to 
save sinners, who sent forth His Gospel as the means of 
their salvation, would have sufiered a false Christian 
religion, and no other than a false Christian religion, to be 
known amongst men all this while ? Will these modest 
assailants of the faith of their and our ancestors assert to 
our faces, that, for twelve hundred years at least, there 
were no true Christians in the world ? Will they tell us 
that Christ, who promised to be with the teachers of His 
word to the end of the world, wholly left them, and gave 
up hundreds upon hundreds of milUons of people to be led 
in darkness to their eternal perdition, by one whom HisBJ 
inspired followers had denominated the ** man of sin " and 
the " scarlet whore " ? Will they, indeed, dare to tell us 
that Christ gave up the world wholly to " Antichrist " for 
twelve hundred years ? Yet this they must do, they must 
thus stand forward with bold and unblushing blasphemy ; 



or they must confess themselves guilty of the most atrocious 
calumny against the Catholic religion. 

11. Then, coming nearer home, and closer to our own 
bosoms, our ancestors became Christians about six hun- 
dred years after the death of Christ. And how did they 
become Christians ? Who first pronounced the name of 
Christ to this land ? Who converted the Enghsh from 
paganism to Christianity ? Some Protestant saint, doubt- 
less, warm from a victory like that of Skibbereen ? No, no ! 
The work was begun, continued, and ended by the Popes, 
one of whom sent over some monks (of whom we shall 
see more by-and-by) who settled at Canterbury, and from 
whose beginnings the Christian religion spread, like the 
grain of mustard-seed, rapidly over the land. Whatever 
therefore any other part of the world might have known 
of Christianity before the Pope became the settled and 
acknowledged head of the Church, England at any rate 
never had known of any Christian religion other than that 
at the head of which was the Pope ; and in this religion, 
with the Pope at its head, England continued to be firmly 
fixed for nine hundred years. 

12. What then : will our kind teachers tell us that it 
was the "scarlet whore" and "Antichrist" who brought 
the glad tidings of the gospel into England ? Will they 
tell us too, that all the millions and hundreds of millions of 
English people who died during those nine hundred years 
expired without the smallest chance of salvation ? Will 
they tell us that all our fathers, who first built our churches, 
and whose flesh and bones form the earth for many feet 
deep in all the churchyards ; will they tell us that all these 
are now howling in the regions of the damned ? Nature 
beats at our bosom, and bids us shudder at the impious, the 
horrid thought ! Yet this, even this, these presumptuous 
men must tell us, or they must confess their base calumny 
in calling the Pope '* Antichrist," and the Catholic wor* 
ship " idolatrous " and its doctrines ** damnable." 



13. But, coming to the present time, the days in which 
we ourselves live, if we look round the world we shall find 
that now, even now, about nine-tenths of all those who 
profess to be Christians are Catholics. What then : has 
Christ suffered ** Antichrist " to reign almost wholly un- 
interrupted even unto this day ? Has Christ made the 
Protestant Church ? Did He suggest the " Reformation " ? 
And does He, after all, then suffer the followers of '* Anti- 
christ " to out-number His own followers, nine to one ? 
But, in this view of the matter, how lucky have been the 
clergy of our Protestant Church, established by law ! Her 
flock does not, if fairly counted, contain one-five-hundredth- 
part of the number of those who are Catholics ; while, 
observe, her clergy receive more, not only than all the 
clergy of all the Catholic nations, but more than all the 
clergy of all the Christian people in the world, Catholics 
and Protestants all put together ! She calls herself a 
Church " by law established." She never omits this part 
of her title. She calls herself " holy," ** godly," and a good 
deal besides. She calls her ministers *' reverend," and her 
worship and doctrines " evangelical." She talks very 
much about her reliance for support upon her " founder " 
(as she calls Him) Christ ; but, in stating her claims and 
her qualities, she never fails to conclude with " by law 
established." This "law," however, sometimes wants the 
bayonet to enforce it ; and her tithes are not unfrequently 
collected by the help of soldiers, under the command of 
her ministers, whom the law has made Justices of the 
Peace ! 

14. To return : are we to believe, then, that Christ has, 
even unto this day, abandoned nine-tenths of the people of 
Europe to " Antichrist ? " Are we to believe, that, if this 
" law-established " religion had been the religion of Christ, 
and the Catholic religion that of " Antichrist ; " if this had 
been the case, are we to believe, that the " law- established " 
religion, that our "holy religion," as it is so often called, 



would at the end of two hundred years have been able to 
count only one member for about every five hundred 
members (taking all Christendom together) of that Church 
against which the " law " Church protested and still 
protests ? 

15. Away, then, my friends, with this foul abuse of the 
Catholic religion, which, after all, is the religion of about 
nine-tenths of all the Christians in the world ! Away with 
this shameful calumny, the sole object of which is, and 
always has been, to secure a quiet possession of the spoils 
of the Catholic Church and of the poor ; for we shall, by- 
and-by, clearly see how the poor v>^ere despoiled at the 
same time that the Church was. 

16. But there remains to be noticed, in this place, an 
instance or two of the consistency of these revilers of the 
Catholic Church and faith. We shall, in due time, see 
how the Protestants, the moment they began their " Re- 
formation," were split up into dozens and scores of sects, 
each condemning the other to eternal flames. But I will 
here speak only of the " Church of England," as it is 
called, " by law established." Now we know very well, 
that we who belong to this Protestant Church believe, or 
profess to believe, that the New Testament, as printed and 
distributed amongst us, contains the true and genuine 
" word of God ; " that it contains the ** words of eternal 
Hfe ; " that it points out to us the means, and the only 
means, by which we can possibly be saved from everlast- 
ing fire. This is what we believe. Now, how did we come 
by this New Testament ? Who gave us this real and 
genuine " word of God ?," From whom did we receive 
these " words of eternal life ? " They are questions of 
great importance; because, if this be the book, and the 
only book, which contains instructions relative to the 
means of saving our souls, it is manifest that it is a matter 
of deep interest to us who it was that this book came from 
to us, through what channel we received it, and what proof 
we have of its authenticity. 



10 

17- Oh ! what a shocking thing it is, that we Protestants 
should have received this New Testament ; this real and 
genuine ** word of God ; " these " words of eternal life ; " 
this book that points out to us the means, and the only 
means, of salvation : what a shocking fact, that we should 
have received this book from that Pope and that Catholic 
Church, to make us believe that the first of whom is the 
Whore of Babylon, and that the worship of the last is idola- 
trous, and her doctrines damnable, the Society " for pro- 
moting Christian Knowledge" is now, at this very moment, 
publishing and pushing into circulation no less than seven- 
teen different books and tracts ! 

1 8. After the death of Christ there was a long space of 
time before the gospel was put into anything like its present 
shape. It was preached in several countries, and churches 
were established in those countries, long before the written 
gospel was known much of, or at least long before it was 
made use of as a guide to the Christian Churches. At the 
end of about four hundred years, the written gospels were 
laid before a Council of the Catholic Church, of which the 
Pope was the head. But there were several gospels, 
besides those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ! 
Several other of the apostles, or early disciples, had 
written gospels. All these, long after the death of the 
authors, were, as I have just said, laid before a Council 
of the Catholic Church, and that Council determined which 
of the gospels were genuine and which not. It retained 
the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John : it 
determined that these four should be received and believed 
in, and that all the rest should be rejected. 

ig. So that the Society *' for promoting Christian 
Knowledge " is without any other gospel ; without any 
other word of God ; without any guide to eternal life ; 
without any other than that which that Society, as well 
as all the rest of us, have received from a Church which 
that Society calls " idolatrous," and the head of which it 



II 

calls " the beast, the man of sin, the scarlet whore, and 
Antichrist I " To a pretty state, then, do we reduce our- 
selves, by giving in to this foul-mouthed calumny against 
the Catholic Church : to a pretty state do we reduce our- 
selves by our tame and stupid hstening to those who 
calumniate the Catholic Church because they live on 
the spoils of it. To a pretty state do we come, when we, 
if we still listen to these calumniators, proclaim to the 
world that our only hope of salvation rests on promises 
contained in a book which we have received from the 
Scarlet Whore, and of the authenticity of which we have 
no voucher other than that Scarlet Whore and that Church, 
whose worship is " idolatrous " and whose doctrines are 
" damnable." 

20. This is pretty complete, but still this, which applies 
to all Protestants, is not enough of inconsistency to satisfy 
the law-Church of England. That Church has a Liturgy, 
in great part made up of the Catholic service ; but there 
are the two creeds, the Nicene and Athanasian. The first 
was composed and promulgated by a Council of the Catho- 
lic Church and the Pope ; and the second was adopted, and 
ordered to be used, by another Council of that Church, with 
the Pope at its head. Must not a parson of this law- 
Church be pretty impudent, then, to call the Pope " Anti- 
christ," and to call the Catholic Church " idolatrous ? " 
Pretty impudent, indeed ; but we do not, even yet, see the 
grossest inconsistency of all. 

21. To our law- Church Prayer-Book there is a calendar 
prefixed, and in this calendar there are, under different 
days of the year, certain names of holy men and women. 
Their names are put here in order that their anniversaries 
may be attended to, and religiously attended to, by the 
people. Now, who are those holy persons ? Some Pro- 
testant saints, to be sure ? Not one ! What, not saint 
Luther, nor saint Cranmer, nor saint Edward the Sixth, 
noi the '* virgin " s^int Elizabeth ? Not a soul of them ; 



but a whole list of Popes, Catholic bishops, and Catholic 
holy persons, female as well as male. Several virgins, but 
not the "virgin Queen," nor any one of the Protestant race. 
At first sight this seems odd, for this calendar was made 
by act of Parliament. But the truth is, it was necessary 
to preserve some of their names, so long revered by the 
people, in order to keep them in better humour, and to lead M 
them by degrees into the new religion. At any rate, here ■ 
is the Prayer- Book holding up for our respect and rever- 
ence a whole list of Popes and of other persons belonging 
to the Catholic Church, while those who teach us to read 
and to repeat the contents of this same Prayer-Book are 
incessantly dinning in our ears that the Popes have all 
been " Antichrists," and that their Church was, and is, 
idolatrous in its worship and damnable in its doctrines ! 

22. We shall, in due time, see the curious way in which 
this Prayer-Book was first made, and how it was new- 
modelled from time to time. But here it is now, even to 
this day, with the Catholic saints in the calendar, whence 
it seems that even down to the reign of Charles II., when 
the last " improvement " was made in it, there had not 
appeared any Protestant saints to supply the place of the 
old Catholic ones. 

23. But there is still a dilemma for these revilers of the 
Catholic religion. We swear on the four Evangelists 1 
And these, mind, we get from the Pope and a Council .of 
the Catholic Church. So that if the Pope be "Anti- 
christ," that is to say, if those who have taught us to 
abuse and abhor the Catholics ; if those be not the falsest 
and most maUgnant wretches that ever breathed, here are 
we swearing upon a book handed down to us by " Anti- 
christ ? " And, as if the inconsistencies and absurdities 
springing out of this Protestant calumny were to have no 
end, that " Christianity," which the judges say, " is part 
and parcel of the law of the land ; " that Christianity is 
no other than what is taught in this same New Testament, 



13 

Take the New Testament away, and there is not a particle 
of this " part and parcel " left. What is our situation ? 
What a figure does this part and parcel of the law of the 
land make, with a dozen of persons in gaol for offending 
against it ; what a figure does it make if we adopt the 
abuse and falsehood of the revilersof the Catholic Church! 
What a figure does that " part and parcel " make if we 
follow our teachers ; if we follow every brawler from every 
tub in the country, and say that the Pope (from whom we 
got the "part and parcel") is "Antichrist" and the 
" scarlet whore " ! 

24. Enough ! Aye, and much more than enough to 
make us sorely repent of having so long been the dupes of 
the crafty and selfish revilers of the religion of our fathers. 
Were there ever presumption, impudence, inconsistency 
and insincerity equal to those of which we have just taken 
a view ? When we thus open our eyes and look into the 
matter, we are astonished, and ashamed of our credulity ; 
and this, more especially, when we reflect that the far 
greater part of us have suffered ourselves to be misled by 
men not possessing a tenth part of our own capacity, by 
a set of low-minded, greedy creatures, but indefatigable ; 
never losing sight of the spoil, and day after day, year 
after year, close at the ears of the people from their very 
childhood, din, din, din, incessantly, until from mere habit 
the monstrous lie got sucked in for gospel truth. Had the 
lie been attended with no consequences, it might have been 
merely laughed at, as all men of sense laugh at the old 
silly lie about the late king, having " made the judges inde- 
pendent of the Crown." But there have been conse- 
quences, and those most dreadful. By the means of the 
great Protestant lie the Catholics and Protestants have 
been kept in a constant staL jf hostile feeUng towards 
each other ; and both, but particularly the former, have 
been, in one shape or other, oppressed and plundered fo/ 
ages, with impunity to the oppressors and plunderers. 



I 



14 



1 



25- Having now shown that the censure heaped on the 
reHgion of our forefathers is not only unjust, but absurd 
and monstrous ; having shown that there could be no good 
reason for altering the reHgion of England from Catholic 
to Protestant ; having exposed the vile and selfish calum- 
niators, and duly prepared the mind of every just person 
for that fair and honest inquiry of which I spoke in para- 
graph 4 : having done this, I should now enter on that 
inquiry, and show in the first place how this '' Reforma- 
tion," as it is called, ** was engendered ; " but there is 
yet one topic to be touched on in this preUminary number 
of my Httle work. 

26. Truth has, with regard to this subject, made great 
progress in the public mind in England within the last 
dozen years. Men are not now to be carried away by the 
cry of " No-Popery," and the " Church in danger ; " ani 
it is now by no means rare to hear Protestants allov/ that, 
as to faith, as to morals, as to salvation, the Catholic 
religion is quite good enough ; and a very large part of 
the people of England are forward to declare that the 
CathoHcs have been most barbarously treated, and that 
it is time that they had justice done them. 

27. But, with all these just notions, there exists, amongst 
Protestants in general, an opinion that the Catholic 
religion is unfavourable to civil liberty, and also unfavour- 
able to the producing and the exerting of genius and talent. 
As to the former, I shall, in the course of this work, find 
a suitable place for proving, by the melancholy experience 
of this country, that a total want of civil liberty was un- 
known in England as long as its religion was Catholic; 
and that the moment it lost the protection of the Pope 
its kings and nobles became horrid tyrants, and its peoplCj 
the most abject and most ill-treated of slaves. This ij 
shall prove in due time and place ; and I beg you, my] 
friends, to bear in mind that I pledge myself to this proof.] 

28. And now to the other charge against the Catholic! 



15 

religion ; namely, that it is unfavourable to the producing 
of genius and talent, and to the causing of them to be 
exerted. I am going, in a minute, to prove that this 
charge is not only false, but ridiculously and most stupidly 
false ; but before I do this, let me observe that this charge 
comes from the same source with all the other charges 
against the Catholics. " Monkish ignorance and super- 
stitution " is a phrase that you find in every Protestant 
historian, from the reign of Elizabeth to the present hour. 
It has, with time, become a sort of magpie-saying, like 
** glorious revolution," *' happy constitution," '' good old 
king," " envy of surrounding nations," and the like. But 
there has always, false as the notion will presently be 
proved to be, there has always been a very sufficient 
motive for inculcating it. Blackstone, for instance, in his 
Commentaries on the Laws of England ^ never lets slip an 
opportunity to rail against ** monkish ignorance and super- 
stition." Blackstone was no fool. At the very time 
when he was writing these Commentaries, and reading 
them to the students at Oxford, he was, and he knew it, 
living upon the spoils of the Catholic Church and the 
spoils of the Catholic gentry, and also of the poor ! He 
knew that well. He knew that if every one had had his 
due he would not have been fattening where he was. He 
knew besides, that all who heard his lectures were aware 
of the spoils that he was wallowing in. These considera- 
tions were quite sufficient to induce him to abuse the 
Catholic Church, and to affect to look back with contempt 
to Catholic times. 

29. For cool, placid, unruffled impudence, there have 
been no people in the world to equal the " Reformation " 
gentry ; and Blackstone seems to have inherited this 
quality in a direct line from some altar-robber of the reign 
of that sweet young Protestant saint, Edward the Sixth. 
If Blackstone had not actually felt the spoils of the 
Catholics sticking to bis ribs, he would have recollected 



i6 

that all those things which he was eulogizing, Magna 
Charta, trial by jury, the offices of sheriff, justice of the 
peace, constable, and all the rest of it, arose in days of 
"monkish ignorance and superstition." If his head had 
not been rendered muddy by his gormandizing on the spoils 
of the Catholic Church, he would have remembered that 
Fortescue, and that that greatest of all our lawyers, 
Lyttleton, were born, bred, lived and died in the days of 
"monkish ignorance and superstitution," But, did not 
this Blackstone know, that the very roof, under which he 
was abusing our Catholic forefathers, was made by these 
forefathers ? Did he not, when he looked up to that roof, 
or when he beheld any of those noble buildings which, 
in defiance of time, still tell us what those forefathers were, 
did he not, when he beheld any of these, feel that he was 
a pigmy in mind, compared with those whom he had the 
impudence to abuse ? 

30. When we hear some Jew or Orangeman talk about 
** monkish ignorance and superstition," we turn from him 
with silent contempt : but Blackstone is to be treated in 
another manner. It was at Oxford where he wrote, and 
where he was reading, his Commentaries. He well knew, 
that the foundations for learning at Oxford were laid and 
brought to perfection, not only in monkish times, but, in 
great part, by monks. He knew, " that the abbeys were 
public schools for education, each of them having one or 
more persons set apart to instruct the youth of the neigh- 
bourhood, without any expense to the parents." He 
knew, that "each of the greater monasteries had a peculiar 
residence in the universities ; and, whereas there were, in 
those times, nearly three hundred halls and private schools 
at Oxford, besides the colleges, there were not above eight 
remaining towards the middle of the seventeenth century,"* 
that is to say, in about a hundred years after the enlight- 

* Phillips' Li/e of Cardinal Pole^ i., p. 22a 



17 

ening "Reformation" began. At this time (1824) there 
are, I am informed, only five halls remaining, and not a 

single school. 

31. I shall, in another place, have to show more fully 
the folly and, indeed, the baseness of railing against the 
monastic institutions generally; but I must here confine 
myself to this charge against the Catholic religion, of 
being unfavourable to genius, talent, and, in short, to the 
powers of the mind. It is a strange notion ; and one can 
hardly hear it mentioned without suspecting that, some- 
how or other, there is plunder at the bottom of the appar- 
ently nothing but stupid idea. Those who put forward 
this piece of rare impudence do not favour us with reasons 
for believing that the Catholic religion has any such 
tendency. They content themselves with the bare asser- 
tion, not supposing that it admits of anything like disproof. 
They look upon it as assertion against assertion ; and, in 
a question which depends on mere hardness of mouth, thej' 
know that their triumph is secure. But this is a question 
that does admit of proof, and very good proof too. The 
** Reformation " in England was pretty nearly completed 
by the year 1600. By that time all the " monkish ig- 
norance and superstition '\ were swept away. The monas- 
teries were all pretty nearly knocked down, young King 
Edward's people had robbed all the altars, and Elizabeth 
had put the finishing hand to the pillage. So that all was, 
in 1600, become as Protestant as heart could wish. Very 
well ; the kingdom of France remained buried in " monkish 
ignorance and superstition " until the year 1787 ; that is to 
say, 187 years after happy England stood in a blaze of 
Protestant light ! Now, then ; if we carefully examine 
into the number of men remarkable for great powers of 
mind, men famed for their knowledge or genius ; if we 
carefully examine into the number of such men produced 
by France in these 187 years, and the number of such men 
produced by England, Scotland, and Ireland, during the 



i8 

same period ; if we do this, we shall get at a pretty good 
foundation for judging of the effects of the two rehgions, 
with regard to their influence on knowledge, and genius — 
what is generally called learning. 

32. " Oh, no ! " exclaim the fire-shovels. '* France is a 
great deal bigger, and contains more people, than these 
Islands ; and this is not fair play ! " Do not be frightened, 
good fire-shovels. According to your own account, these 
Islands contain twenty-one millions ; and the French say 
that they have thirty milHons. Therefore, when we have 
got the numbers, we will make an allowance of one-third in 
our favour accordingly. If, for instance, the French have 
not three famous men to every two of ours, then I shall 
confess that the law-established Church and its family of 
Muggletonians, Cameronians, Jumpers, Unitarians, Shakers, 
Quakers, and the rest of the Protestant Utter, are more 
favourable to knowledge and genius, than is the Catholic 
Church. 

33. But how are we to ascertain these numbers ? Very 
well. I shall refer to a work which has a place in every 
good library in the kingdom ; I mean the Universal, Histori- 
cal, Critical and Bibliographical Dictionary, This work, which 
is everywhere received as authority as to facts, contains 
Hsts of persons of all nations, celebrated for their published 
works. But then, to have a place in these lists the 
person must have been really distinguished ; his oc her 
works must have been considered as worthy of universal 
notice. From these lists I shall take my numbers, as 
before proposed. It will not be necessary to go into all the 
arts and sciences ; eight or nine will be sufficient. It may 
be as well, perhaps, to take the Italians as well as the 
French ; for we all know that they were living in most 
shocking " monkish ignorance and superstition ; " and 
that they, poor, unfortunate and unplundered souls, are so 
living unto this very day ! 

34. Here, then, is the statement : and you have only to 



19 

observe, that the figures represent the number of persons 

who were famous for the art or science opposite the name 

of which the figures are placed. The period is from the 

year 1600 to 1787, during which period France was under 

what has been called the *' dark despotism of the Catholic 

Church," and what Blackstone calls '* monkish ignorance 

and superstition : " and, during the same period, these 

islands were in a blaze of Hght, sent forth by Luther, 

Cranmer, Knox, and their followers. Here, then, is the 

statement : — 

England, Scotland, 

and Ireland. France, Italy. 

Writers on law 6 51 9 

Mathematicians 17 52 15 

Physicians and surgeons 13 72 21 

Writers on natural history 6 33 11 

Historians , 21 139 22 

Dramatic writers 19 66 6 

Grammarians 7 42 2 

Poets 38 157 34 

Painters 5 64 44 

132 676 164 

35. Here is that very *' scale " which a modest Scotch 
writer spoke of the other day, when he told the public that, 
'* throughout Europe, Protestants rank higher in the scale 
of intellect than Catholics, and that Catholics in the 
neighbourhood of Protestants are more intellectual than 
those at a distance from them." This is a fine specimen 
of upstart Protestant impudence. The above " scale " is, 
however, a complete answer to it. Allow one-third more 
to the French on account of their superior populousness, 
and then there will remain to them 451 to our 132! So 
that they had, man for man, three and a-half times as 
much intellect as we, though they were buried all the 
while in " monkish ignorance and superstition," and 



I 



20 



though they had no Protestant neighbours to catch the 
intellect from ! Even the Italians surpass us in this rival- 
ship for intellect ; for their population is not equal to that 
of which we boast, and their number of men of mind con- 
siderably exceeds that of ours. But, do I not, all this 
while, misunderstand the matter ? And, by intellect, does 
not the Scotchman mean the capacity to make, not books 
and pictures, but checks, bills, bonds, exchequer-bills, 
inimitable notes, and the like ? Does he not mean loan- 
jobbing and stock -jobbing, insurance-broking, annuities at 
ten per cent., kite-flying, and all the ** intellectual " pro- 
ceedings of 'Change Alley ? Ah ! in that case, I confess 
that he is right. On this scale Protestants do rank high 
indeed ! And I should think it next to impossible for a 
Catholic to live in their neighbourhood without being 
much ** more intellectual," that is to say, much more of 
a Jewish knave, than if he lived at a distance from them. 

36. Plere then, my friends, sensible and just English- 
men, I close this introduction. I have shown you how 
grossly we have been deceived, even from our very infancy. 
I have shown you, not only the injustice, but the absurdity 
of the abuse heaped by our interested deluders on the 
religion of their and our fathers. I have shown you enough 
to convince you that there was no obviously just cause for 
an alteration in the religion of our country. I have, I 
dare say, awakened in your minds a strong desire to know 
how it came to pass, then, that this alteration was made ; 
and in the following pages it shall be my anxious 
endeavour to fully gratify this desire. But, observe, my 
chief object is to show that this alteration made the main 
body of the people poor and miserable compared with what 
they were before ; that it impoverished and degraded them ; 
that it banished at once that " old EngUsh hospitality," of 
which we have since known nothing but the name ; and 
that in lieu of that hospitality it gave us pauperism, a 
thing the very name of which was never before known in 
England. 



11 



ai 



CHAPTER II. 

37. It was not a " reformation," but a " devastation," of 
England, which was, at the time when this event took place, 
the happiest country, perhaps, that the world had ever 
seen ;^ and it is my chief business to show that this devas- 
tation impoverished and degraded the main body of the 
people. But, in order that you may see this devastation 
in its true light, and that you may feel a just portion of 
indignation against the devastators and against their 
eulogists of the present day, it is necessary, first, that you 
take a correct view of the things on which their devastating 
powers were exercised. 

38. The far greater part of those books which are called 
Histories of England are little better than romances. They 
treat of battles, negociations, intrigues of court, amours 
of kings, queens, and nobles ; they contain the gossip and 
scandal of former times, and very little else. There are 
histories of England, like that of Dr. Goldsmith, for the 
use of young persons ; but no young person who has read 
them through knows any more of any possible use than 

' That these round terms are not so wide of the truth is clear from the 
Italian Relation of England (Camden Society) and from the successive 
reports of the Venetian ambassadors in England {Calendar of Venetian 
State PapQtSy ii«., 219 j iv., 682, 694; v., 54, 703, 934). The same 
appears from ths investigatioais oi Professor Thorold Rogers into the 
history of agriculture in England. 



23 



1 



he or she knows before. The great use of history is t() 
teach us how laws, usages and institutions arose, whatjl 
were their effects on the people, how they promoted public "' 
happiness, or otherwise ; and these things are precisely 
what the greater part of historians, as they call themselves, 
seem to think of no consequence. 

39. We never understand the nature and constituent 
parts of a thing so well as when we ourselves have made 
the thing : next to making it is the seeing of it made ; but 
if we have neither of these advantages, we ought at least, 
if possible, to get a true description of the origin of the 
thing and of the manner in which it was put together. I 
have to speak to you of the Catholic Church generally, 
then of the Church in England, under which head I shaA 
have to speak of the parish churches, the monasteries, the 
tithes and other revenues of the Church. It is, therefore, 
necessary that I explain to you how the Catholic Church 
arose, and how churches, monasteries, tithes and other 
church revenues came to be in England. When you have 
this information you will well understand what it was which 
was devastated by Henry VIII. and the "Reformation" 
people. And I am satisfied that when you have read this 
one number of my little work, you will know more about 
your country than you have learned, or ever will learn, 
from the reading of hundreds of those bulky volumes, 
called Histories of England. 

40. The Catholic Church originated with Jesus Christ 
Himself. He selected Peter to be head of His Church. 
This Apostle's name was Simon, but his Master called 
him Peter, which means a stone or rock ; and He said, 
"on this rock will I build my Church." Look at the 
Gospel of Saint Matthew xvi., 18, 19, and at that of Saint 
John xxi., 15, and onward; and you will see that we must 
deny the truth of the Scriptures, or acknowledge tbat 
there was a head of the Church promised for all genera- 
tions. 



23 

41. Saint Peter died a martyr' at Rome in about 60 
years after the birth of Christ. But another suppUed his 
place ; and there is the most satisfactory evidence that the 
chain of succession has remained unbroken from that day 
to this. When I said in paragraph 10, that it might be 
said that there was no Pope seated at Rome for the first 
three hundred years, I by no means meant to admit the 
fact, but to get rid of a pretence which at any rate could 
not apply to England, which was converted to Christianity 
by missionaries sent by a Pope, the successor of other 
Popes who had been seated at Rome for hundreds of years. 
The truth is, that, from the persecutions which for the 
first three hundred years the Church underwent, the Chief 
Bishops, successors of St. Peter, had not always the 
means of openly maintaining their supremacy ; but they 
always existed, there was always a Chief Bishop, and his 
supremacy was always acknowledged by the Church ; that 
is to say, by all the Christians then in the world. 

42. Of later date, the Chief Bishop has been called in 
our language, the Pope, and in the French, Pape. In the 
Latin he is called Papa, which is a union and abbrevia- 
tion of the two Latin words. Pater Patnim, which means 
Father of Fathers. Hence comes the appellation of papa, 
which children of all Christian nations give to their fathers ; 
an appellation of the highest respect and most ardent and 
sincere affection. Thus, then, the Pope, each as he suc- 
ceeded to his office, became the chief or head of the 
Church ; and his supreme power and authority were 
acknowledged, as I have observed in paragraph 3, by all 
the bishops and by all the teachers of Christianity in all 
the nations where that religion existed. The Pope was, 

* The fact of St. Peter's martyrdom in Rome is attested by constant 
tradition from the second century. Signor Lanciani {Pagan and Christian 
Rome, p. 123), considers that it is impossible to call the fact in question. 
See also Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Fa-rt I., i., pp. 73-75, and II., p. 489 
seqq. ; also Salmon, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 545 seqq. 



I 



24 

and is, assisted by a body of persons called Cardinatr ^r 
Great Councillors ; and at various and numerous timei 
Councils of the Church have been held in order to discusf' 
and settle matters of deep interest to the unity and well 
being of the Church. These Councils have been held ij 
all the countries of Christendom. Many were held ir 
England. The Popes themselves have been taken pro- 
miscuously from men of all the Christian nations. Pop*^, 
Adrian IV. was an Englishman, the son of a very poor 
labouring man : but having become a servant in a 
monastery, he was there taught and became himself a 
monk.' In time he grew famous for his learning, his 
talents and piety, and at last became the head of the 
Church. 

43. The Popedom, or office of Pope, continued in exis- 
tence through all the great and repeated revolutions of 
kingdoms and empires. The Roman empire, which was at 
the height of its glory at the beginning of the Christian 
era, and which extended, indeed, nearly over the whole of 
Europe and part of Africa and Asia, crumbled all to pieces, 
yet the Popedom remained; and at the time when the 
devastation, commonly called the " Reformation" of Eng- 
land began, there had been, during the fifteen hundred 
years, about two hundred and sixty Popes, following each 
other in due and unbroken succession. 

44. The history of the Church in England, down to the 
time of the " Reformation," is a matter of deep interest to 
us. A mere look at it, a bare sketch of the principal facts, 
will show how false, how unjust, how ungrateful tho§s 
have been who have vihfied the Catholic Church, its 
Popes, its monks and its priests. It is supposed by some, 
and indeed with good authorities on their side, that the 
Christian religion was partly introduced into England so 

• Adrian IV., a native of St. Albans, held the Popedom from a.d. 1155 
to 1 1 59. His father became a monk of St. Albans in later life, but he 
himself took the habit of a canon regular in France. 



25 

early as the second century after Christ. But we know for 
a certainty that it was introduced effectually in the year 
596; that is to say, 923 years before Henry VIII. began to 
destroy it. 

45. England, at the time when this religion was intro- 
duced, was governed by seven kings, and that state was 
called the Heptarchy. The people of the whole country 
were pagans. Yes, my friends, our ancestors were pagans ; 
they worshipped gods made with hands ; and they sacri- 
ficed children on the altars of their idols. In this state 
England was when the Pope of that day, Gregory I., sent 
forty monks, with a monk of the name of Austin (or 
Augustin) at their head, to preach the Gospel to the Eng- 
lish. Look into the calendar of our Common Prayer- 
Book, and you will find the name of Gregory the Great 
under the 12th of March, and that of Augustin under the 
26th of May. 

46. Now, please to bear in mind that this great event 
took place in the year 596. The Protestant writers have 
been strangely embarrassed in their endeavours to make 
it out, that up to this time, or thereabouts, the Catholic 
Church was pure and trod in the steps of the Apostles ; but 
that after this time that Church became corrupt. They 
applaud the character and acts of Pope Gregory ; they do 
the same with regard to Austin : shame would not suffer 
them to leave their names out of the calendar ;^ but still 
they want to make it out, that there was no pure Christian 
religion after the Pope came to be the visible and acknow- 
ledged head and to have supreme authority. There are 
scarcely any two of them that agree upon this point. 
Some say that it was 300, some 400, some 500, and some 
600 years before the Catholic Church ceased to be the true 
Church of Christ. But none of them can deny, nor dare 



* They were left out of the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer in 
its editions of 1549, 1552 and 1559, but restored in 1561. 



26 

they attempt it, that it was the Christian religion as prac- 
tised at Rome ; that it was the Roman Catholic religion 
that was introduced into England in the year 596, with all 
its dogmas, rites, ceremonies and observances, just as they 
all continued to exist at the time of the *' Reformation," 
and as they continue to exist in that Church even unto this 
day. Whence it clearly follows, that if the Catholic 
Church were corrupt at the time of the " Reformation," or 
be corrupt now, be radically bad now, it was so in 596 ; 
and then comes the impious and horrid inference, men- 
tioned in paragraph 12, that " All our fathers who first 
built our churches, and whose bones and flesh form the 
earth for many feet deep in all the churchyards, are now 
howling in the region of the damned." 

47. "The tree is known by its fruit." Bear in mind, 
that it was the CathoHc faith, as now held, that was intro- 
duced into England by Pope Gregory the Great ; and 
bearing this in mind, let us see what were the effects of 
that introduction, let us see how that faith worked its way, 
in spite of wars, invasions, tyrannies, and political revolu- 
tions. 

48. Saint Austin, upon his arrival, applied to the Saxon 
king within whose dominions the county of Kent lay. He 
obtained leave to preach to the people, and his success 
wao great and immediate. He converted the king himself, 
who was very gracious to him and his brethren, and who 
provided dwellings and other necessaries for them at Can- 
terbury. Saint Austin and his brethren, being monks, lived 
together in common, and from this common home went 
forth over the country, preaching the Gospel. As the 
community was diminished by death, new members were 
ordained to keep up the supply ; and besides this, the 
number was in time greatly augmented. A church was 
built at Canterbury. Saint Austin was of course, the 
Bishop, or Head Priest. He was succeeded by other 
bishops. As Christianity spread over the island, other 



27 

communities, like that at Canterbury, were founded in 
other cities; as at London, Winchester, Exeter, Worces- 
ter, Norwich, York, and so of all the other places, where 
there are now Cathedrals, or Bishops' churches. Hence, 
m process of time arose those majestic and venerable 
edifices, of the possession of which we boast as the work 
of our forefathers, while we have the folly, and injustice, 
and inconsistency to brand the memory of those very 
forefathers with the charge of grovelling ignorance, super- 
stition and idolatry ; and while we show our own mean- 
ness of mind in disfiguring and dishonouring those noble 
buildings by plastering them about with our childish and 
gingerbread " monuments," nine times out of ten the 
offspring of vanity or corruption. 

49. As to the mode of supporting the clergy in those 
times, it was by oblations or free gifts, and sometimes by 
tithes, which land -owners paid themselves, or ordered their 
tenants to pay, though there was no general obligation to 
yield tithes for many years after the arrival of St. Austin, 
In this collective or collegiate state the clergy remained 
for many years. But, in time, as the land-owners became 
converted to Christianity, they were desirous of having 
priests settled near to them, and always upon the spot 
ready to perform the offices of religion. The land was 
then owned by comparatively few persons. The rest of 
the people were vassals, or tenants, of the land-owners. 
The land-owners, therefore, built churches on their estates, 
and generally near their own houses, for the benefit of 
themselves, their vassals, and tenants. And to this day 
we see, in numerous instances, the country church close 
by the gentleman's house. When they built the churches, 
they also built a house for the priest, which we now call 
the parsonage-house ; and, in most cases, they attached 
some plough-land, or meadow-land, or both, to the priest's 
house, for his use ; and this was called his glebe, which 
word, literally taken, means the top earth, which is turned 



28 

over by the plough. Besides these, the land-owners, in 
conformity with the custom then prevalent in other Chris- 
tian countries, endowed the churches with the tithe of the 
produce of their estates. 

50. Hence parishes arose. Parish means a priestship, 
as the land on which a town stands is a township. So 
that the great man's estate now became a parish. He 
retained the right of appointing the priest, whenever a 
vacancy happened ; but he could not displace a priest, 
when once appointed ; and the whole of the endowment 
became the property of the Church, independent of his 
control. It was a long while, even two centuries, or more, 
before this became the settled law of the whole kingdom ; 
but at last it did become such. But to this possession 
of so much property by the Church certain important con- 
ditions were attached ; and to these conditions it behoves 
us of the present day to pay particular attention ; for we 
are, at this time, more than ever feeling the want of the 
performance of those conditions. 

51. There never can have existed a state of society; 
that is to say, a state of things in which proprietorship in 
land was acknowledged, and in which it was maintained 
by law ; there never can have existed such a state without 
an obligation on the land-owners to take care of the neces- 
sitous and to prevent them from perishing for want. The 
land-owners in England took care of their vassals and 
dependents. But when Christianity, the very basis of 
which is charity, became established, the taking care of 
the necessitous was deposited in the hands of the clergy. 
Upon the very face of it, it appears monstrous that a house, 
a small farm, and the tenth part of the produce of a large 
estate, should have been given to a priest who could have 
no wife and, of course, no family. But, the fact is that 
the grants were for other purposes as well as for the sup- 
port of the priests. The produce of the benefice was to be 



29 

employed thus : " Let the priests receive the tithes of the 
people and keep a written account of all that have paid 
them ; and divide them in the presence of such as fear 
God, according to canonical authority. Let them set 
apart the first share for the repairs and ornaments of the 
church ; let them distribute the second to the poor and the 
stranger, with their own hands, in mercy and humility ; 
and reserve the third part for themselves."^ These were 
the orders contained in a canon issued by a Bishop of 
York. At different times, and under different bishops, 
regulations somewhat different were adopted ; but there 
were always two-fourths, at the least, of the annual produce 
of the benefice to be given to the necessitous, and to be 
employed in the repairing or in the ornamenting of the 
church. 

52. Thus the providing for the poor became one of the 
great duties and uses of the Church. This duty rested 
before on the land-owners. It must have rested on them ; 
for, as Blackstone observes, a right in the indigent " to 
demand a supply sufficient to all the necessities of life from 
the more opulent part of the community is dictated by the 
principles of society." This duty could be lodged in no 
hands so fitly as in those of the clergy ; for thus the work 
of charity, the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the 
naked, the administering to the sick, the comforting of the 
widow, the fostering of the fatherless, came always in 
company with the performance of services to God. For 
the uncertain disposition of the rich, for their occasional 
and sometimes capricious charity, was substituted the 
certain, the steady, the impartial hand of a constantly 
resident and unmarried administrator of bodily as well as 
of spiritual comfort to the poor, the unfortunate, and the 
stranger. 



' See Excerptiones Ecgberti Arch. Ebor.^ No. 5 (in Thorpe's Ancient 
Laws of England^ ii., p. 98 : cf. i., 342 ; ii., 256, note 4, and 352), 



30 

53. We shall see, by-and-by, the condition that the poor 
were placed in, we shall see how all the labouring classes 
were impoverished and degraded, the moment the tithes 
and other revenues of the Church were transferred to a 
Protestant and married clergy ; and we shall have to take 
a full view of the unparalleled barbarity with which the 
Irish people were treated at that time ; but I have not 
yet noticed another great branch or constituent part of 
the Catholic Church: namely, the monasteries, which 
form a subject full of interest and worthy of our best 
attention. The choicest and most highly empoisoned 
shafts in the quiver of the malice of Protestant writers 
seem always to be selected when they have to rail against 
monks, friars, and nuns. We have seen Blackstone 
talking about " monkish ignorance and superstition ; " and 
we hear, every day, Protestant bishops and parsons railing 
against what they call "monkery," talking of the "drones" 
m monasteries, and indeed, abusing the whole of these 
ancient institutions as something degrading to human 
:ttature, in which work of abuse they are most heartily 
joined by the thirty or forty mongrel sects, whose bawling- 
tubs are erected in every corner of the country. 

54. When I come to speak of the measures by which 
the monasteries were robbed, devastated, and destroyed in 
England and Ireland, I shall show how unjust, base, and 
ungrateful this railing against them is; and how foolish 
it is besides. I shall show the various ways in which they 
were greatly useful to the community ; and I shall espe- 
cially show how they operated in behalf of the labouring 
and poorer classes of the people. But in this place I 
shall merely describe, in the shortest manner possible, the 
origin and nature of those institutions and the extent to 
which they existed in England. 

55. Monastery means a place of residence for monks; 
and the word monk comes from a Greek word, which 
means a lonely person, or a person in solitude. There 



31 

were monks, friars, and nuns. The word friar comes from 
the French word fvlve, which, in English, is brother ; and 
the word nun comes from the French word nonne, which 
means a sister in rehgion, a virgin separated from the 
world. The persons, whether male or female, composing 
one of these religious communities, were called a convent, 
and that name was sometimes also given to the buildings 
and enclosures in which the community lived. The place 
where monks lived was called a monastery; that where 
friars lived, a friary; and that where nuns lived, a nunnery. 
As, however, we are not in this case inquiring into the 
differences in the rules, orders and habits of the persons 
belonging to these institutions, I shall speak of them all 
as monasteries. 

56. Then, again, some of these were abbeys, and some 
priories ; of the difference between which it will be suffi- 
cient to say that the former were of a rank superior to the 
latter, and had various privileges of a higher value. An 
abbey had an abbot, or an abbess ; a priory, a prior, or a 
prioress. Then there were different orders of monks, 
friars, and nuns ; and these orders had different rules for 
their government and mode of life, and were distinguished 
by different dresses. With these distinctions we have 
here, however, little to do; for we shall, by-and-by, see 
them all involved in one common devastation. 

57. The persons belonging to a monastery lived in 
common ; they lived in one and the same building ; they 
could possess no property individually ; when they entered 
the walls of the monastery, they left the world wholly be- 
hind them ; they made a solemn vow of celibacy ; they 
could devise nothing by will ; each had a life-interest, but 
nothing more, in the revenues belonging to the community; 
some of the monks and friars were also priests, but this 
was not always the case ; and the business of the whole 
was to say masses and prayers, and to do deeds of hospi- 
tality and charity. 



32 



1 



58. This mode of life began by single persons separating 
themselves from the world and living in complete solitude, 
passing all their days. in prayer, and dedicating themselves 
wholly to the serving of God. These were called hermits, 
and their conduct drew towards them great respect. In 
time, such men, or men having a similar propensity, formed 
themselves into societies, and agreed to live together in 
one house and to possess things in common. Women 
did the same. And hence came those places called 
monasteries. The piety, the austerities, and particularly 
the works of kindness and of charity performed by those 
persons, made them objects of great veneration ; and the 
rich made them, in time, the channels of their benevolence 
to the poor. Kings, queens, princes, princesses, nobles, 
and gentlemen founded monasteries ; that is to say, erected 
the buildings and endowed them with estates for their 
maintenance. Others, some in the way of atonement for 
their sins and some from a pious disposition, gave while 
alive, or bequeathed at their death, lands, houses, or 
money, to monasteries already erected. So that in time 
the monasteries became the owners of great landed estates; 
they had the lordship over innumerable manors, and had 
a tenantry of prodigious extent, especially in England, 
where the monastic orders were always held in great 
esteem, in consequence of Christianity having been in- 
troduced into the kingdom by a community of monks. 

59. To give you as clear a notion as I can of what a 
monastery was, I will describe to you, with as much 
exactness as my memory will enable me, a monastery 
which I saw in France, in 1792, just after the monks had 
been turned out of it, and when it was about to be put upj 
for sale ! The whole of the space enclosed was about eight! 
English acres, which was fenced in by a wall about twenty] 
feet high. It was an oblong square, and at one end of 
one of the sides was a gate-way, with gates as high as the 
wall, and with a little door in one of the great gates for 



33 

the ingress and egress of foot-passengers. This gate 
opened into a spacious courtyard, very nicely paved. On 
one side, and at one end of this yard, were the kitchen, 
lodging-rooms for servants, a dining or eating place for 
them and for strangers and poor people ; stables, coach- 
houses, and other outbuildings. On the other side of the 
courtyard, we entered in ,at a doorway to the place of 
residence of the monks. Here was about half an acre of 
ground of a square form, for a burying-ground. On the 
four sides of this square there was a cloister or piazza, 
the roof of which was on the side of the burying-ground, 
supported by pillars, and at the back supported by a low 
building which went round the four sides. This building 
contained the several dormitories, or sleeping-rooms of the 
monks, each of whom had two little rooms, one for his 
bed, and one for his books and to sit in. Out of the 
hinder room a door opened into a Httle garden about 
thirty feet wide and forty long. On one side of the 
cloister there was a door opening into their dining room, 
in one corner of which there was a pulpit for the monk 
who read while the rest were eating in silence, which was 
according to the rules of the Carthusians, to which Order 
these monks belonged. On the other side of the cloister 
a door opened into the kitchen garden, which was laid out 
in the nicest manner and was well-stocked with fruit trees 
of all sorts. On another side of the cloister a door opened 
and led to the church, which, though not large, was one 
of the most beautiful that I had ever seen. I believe that 
these monks were, by their rules, confined within their 
walls. The country people spoke of them with great 
reverence, and most grievously deplored the loss of them. 
They had large estates, were easy landlords, and they 
wholly provided for all the indigent within miles of their 
monastery. 

60. England, more, perhaps, than any other country in 
Europe, abounded in such institutions, and these more 



34 

richly endowed than anywhere else. In England there 
was, on an average, more than twenty (we shall see the 
exact number by-and-by) of those establishments to a 
coimty ! Here was a prize for an unjust and cruel tyrant 
to lay his lawless hands upon, and for ** Reformation " 
gentry to share amongst them ! Here was enough, indeed, 
to make robbers on a grand scale cry out against ** monkish 
ignorance and superstition " ! No wonder that the bowels 
of Cranmer, Knox, and all the rest, yearned so piteously as 
they did, when they cast their pious eyes on all the farms 
and manors, and on all the silver and gold ornaments 
belonging to these communities ! We shall see by-and- 
by with what alacrity they ousted, plundered, and pulled 
down : we shall see them robbing, under the basest pre- 
tences, even the altars of the country parish churches, down 
to the very smallest of those churches, and down to the 
value of five shillings. But we must first take a view of 
the motives which led the tyrant, Henry VHL, to set their 
devastating and plundering faculties in motion. 

6i. This king succeeded his father, Henry VH., in the 
year 1509. He succeeded to a great and prosperous king- 
dom, a full treasury, and a happy and contented people, 
who expected in him the wisdom of his father without his 
avarice, which seems to have been that father's only fault. 
Henry VHL was eighteen years old when his father died. 
He had had an elder brother, named Arthur, who, at the 
early age of twelve years, had been betrothed to Catherine, 
fourth daughter of Ferdinand, King of Castile and Arra- 
gon.® When Arthur was fourteen years old, the Princess 

• The legal age of marriage was fourteen in the case of youths, but the 
marriage treaty had provided that when Arthur had completed his twelfth 
year the parents might obtain a dispensation. This was asked for and 
given, and Catherine was formally betrothed by proxy to Prince Arthur 
on Whit Sunday, May 19, 1499, and a second time on November 23, 1501, 
when the prince reached the full age of fourteen (Bergenroth, Spanish 
StaU Papers t i., pp. 168, 209, 340). 



35 

came to England, and the marriage ceremony was per- 
formed ;' but Arthur, who was a weak and sickly boy, 
died before the year was out, and the marriage never was 
consummated ; and, indeed, who will believe that it could 
be ? ® Henry wished to marry Catherine, and the marriage 
was agreed to by the parents on both sides ; but it did not 
take place until after the death of Henry VH.^ The 
moment the young King came to the throne, he took 
measures for his marriage.^** Catherine being, though only 
nominally, the widow of his deceased brother, it was 
necessary to have from the Pope, as supreme head of the 
Church, a dispensation in order to render the marriage 
lawful in the eye ot the canon law. The dispensation, to 
which there could be no valid objection, was obtained, 
and the marriage was, amidst the rejoicings of the whole 
nation, celebrated in June, 1509, in less than two months 
after the King's accession." 

62. With this lady, who was beautiful in her youth, and 
whose virtues ot all sorts seem scarcely ever to have been 



' Arthur and Catherine were married at St. Paul's, on November 14, 
1501 {ibid.^ p. 264). 

^ Arthur died April 2, 1502. On the question as to the consummation of 
the marriage, see Mrs Hope, The First Divorce of Henry VIII., P- H, 
notes. 

^ Upon the death of the English Queen, Elizabeth of York, on Feb- 
ruary II, 1503, Henry VH. proposed himself to marry Catherine. Her 
mother, Isabella, would not hear of it, and a betrothal between Prince 
Henry and Catherine took place on June 25, 1503 {ibid., p. 13). For the 
reasons why the actual marriage was delayed see ibid., p. 17. 

1" Henry VII. died April 21, 1509, and Henry VIII. at once made 
arrangements for his marriage with Catherine, which took place publicly 
at St. Paul's on June 3, 1509. 

" The dispensation had been already granted by Pope Julius in December, 
1503. 



36 

exceeded, he lived in the married state seventeen years, 
before the end of which he had had three sons and two 
daughters by her, one of whom only, a daughter, was still 
aHve, who afterwards was Mary, Queen of England. But 
now, at the end of seventeen years, he being thirty-five 
years of age, and eight years younger than the queen, and 
having cast his eyes on a young lady, an attendant on the 
queen, named Anne Boleyn, he, all of a sudden, affected 
to believe^ that he was living in sin because he was 
married to the widow of his brother, though, as we have 
seen, the marriage between Catherine and the brother had 
never been consummated, and though the parents of both 
the parties, together with his own Council, unanimously 
and unhesitatingly approved of his marriage, which had, 
moreover, been sanctioned by the Pope, the head of the 
Church, of the faith and observances of which Henry 
himself had, as we shall hereafter see, been, long since his 
marriage, a zealous defender. 

63. But the tyrant's passions were now in motion, and 
he resolved to gratify them, cost what it might in reputa- 
tion, in treasure, and in blood. He first applied to the 
Pope to divorce him from his queen.^' He was a great 
favourite of the Pope, he was very powerful, there were 
many strong motives for yielding to his request ; but that 
request was so full of injustice, it would have been so cruel 
towards the virtuous queen to accede to it, that the Pope 
could not and did not grant it. He, however, in hopes 
that time might induce the tyrant to relent, ordered a court 



'2 Although the question of Henry's divorce from Catherine had been 
apparently mooted in 1526, when Anne was still in France, her return 
to England the following year seems to have determined Henry to prose- 
cute the suggested suit. [,cf. Mrs. Hope, The First Divorce of Henry 
VIIL, pp. 47, 48). 

»" The first notice of any application to the Pope is apparently about 
September, 1526 (Mrs. Hope, The First Divorce of Henry VIII., p. 44^ 



I 



37 

to be held by his Legate and Wolsey, in England, to hear 
and determine the case. Before this court the Queen 
disdained to plead, and the Legate, dissolving the court 
referred the matter back to the Pope, who still refused to 
take any step towards the granting of the divorce. Tire 
tyrant now became furious, resolved upon overthrowing 
the power of the Pope in England, upon making himself 
the head of the Church in this country, and upon doing 
whatever else might be necessary to insure the gratifica- 
tion of his desires and the glutting of his vengeance." 

64. By making himself the supreme head of the Church, 
he made himself, he having the sword and the gibbet at 
his command, master of all the property of that Church, 
including that of the monasteries ! His counsellors and 
courtiers knew this ; and as it was soon discovered that a 
sweeping confiscation would take place, the parliament 
was by no means backward in aiding his designs, everyone 
hoping to share in the plunder. The first step was to pass 
acts taking from the Pope all authority and power over the 
Church in England, and giving to the King all authority 
whatever as to ecclesiastical matters. His chief adviser 
and abettor was Thomas Cranmer, a name which deserves 
to be held in everlasting execration ; a name which we 
could not pronounce without almost doubting of the justice 
of God, were it not for our knowledge of the fact, that the 
cold-blooded, most perfidious man expired at last amidst 
those flames which he himself had been the chief cause of 
kindling. 

65. The tyrant, being now both Pope and King, made 

^* From the first commencement of the divorce proceedings to the time 
when Henry solved the question by casting off the Pope's authority, 
some six years were occupied in fruitless endeavours to force the Pope to 
grant the royal will. The history of the last three years makes it clear that 
Henry was at heart most reluctant to get rid of the Supremacy of the Holy 
See. 



Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, a dignity just then 
become vacant.^** Of course, this adviser and ready tool 
now became chief judge in all ecclesiastical matters. But 
here was a difficulty ; for the tyrant still professed to be a 
Catholic ; so that his new Archbishop was to be conse- 
crated according to the usual pontifical form, which 
required of him to swear obedience to the Pope. And here 
a transaction took place that will at once show us of what 
sort of stuff the *' Reformation " gentry were made. 
Cranmer, before he went to the altar to be consecrated, 
went into a chapel, and there made a declaration on oath, 
that by the oath that he was about to take, and which, for 
the sake of form, he was obliged to take, he did not intend 
to bind himself to anything that tended to prevent him from 
assisting the King in making any such " reforms "^® as he 



" Archbishop Warham died August 23, 1532. Cranmer was awaf 
from England on an embassy to the Emperor Charles V. He was recalled 
about a month afterwards for the purpose of being made Archbishop of 
Canterbury. It was proved at Cranmer's trial in the reign of Mary that 
the King's intention was known to him directly after Warham's death 
{Cranmer's Remains^ ed. Parker Society, ii., 206), and the haste with which 
the post was filled up is capable of but one explanation, namely, Henry's 
desire to place in the office one who would be willing to grant him a divorce 
from Catherine and allow him to marry Anne. This intention was also 
suggested to Cranmer at his trial {ibid, p. 217). It must be remembered 
that by marrying a wife, against the existing laws, Cranmer had put himself 
into Henry's power, as it is impossible to suppose that the King was 
ignorant of the circumstance. Cf. for the suggested compact between 
Henry and Cranmer, Jenkyns' Cranmer's Works, iv., 92 ; also a letter 
from Pole to Cranmer in Le Grand, Histoire du Divorce^ i., p. 302. 

" Harpsfield {The Pretended Divorce, ed. Camden Society, p. 191) 
records the fact of the protest taken by Cranmer on the morning of his 
consecration, March 30, 1533, " to certain of his friends," that he did not 
intend to be bound by the oaths of obedience to the Pope he was about 
to take at his consecration and investiture with the archiepiscopal pall. 
The Bulls for his appointment had been obtained in the usual way, hi 



59 

might think useful in the Church of England ! I once 
knew a corrupt Cornish knave, who, having sworn to a 
direct falsehood (and that he, in private, acknowledged to 
be such) before an Election Committee of the flouse of 
Commons, being asked how he could possibly give such 
evidence, actually declared, in so many words, ''that he 
had, before he left his lodging in the morning, taken an oath 
that he would swear falsely that day." He, perhaps, 
imbibed his principles from this very Archbishop, who 
occupies the highest place in lying Fox's lying book on 
Protestant Martyrs. 

66. Having provided himself with so famous a judge in 
ecclesiastical matters, -the King lost, of course, no time in 
bringing his hard case before him and demanding justice 
at his hands ! Hard case, indeed ; to be compelled to live 
with a wife of forty-three, when he could have, for next to 
nothing, and only for asking for, a young one of eighteen 
or twenty ! A really hard case ; and he sought relief, now 
that he had got such an upright and impartial judge, with 
all imaginable despatch. What I am now going to relate 
of the conduct of this Archbishop and of the other parties 
concerned in the transaction is calculated to make us 
shudder with horror, to make our very bowels heave with 
loathing, to make us turn our eyes from the paper and 
resolve to read no further. But we must not give way to 
these feelings if we have a mind to know the true history 
of the Protestant " Reformation." We must keep our- 
selves cool ; we must reason ourselves out of our ordinary 
impulses ; we must beseech nature to be quiet within us 
for a while : for, from first to last, we have to contemplate 



proctor taking the required oaths in his name in Rome. The reservation 
made by Cranmer in England that he would not be bound by promises 
made in his behalf (Jenkyns' Cranmer' s Works, iv., ii6) was of course 
unknown to the Roman officials. There is no evidence to show that the 
consecrating prelates had any knowledge of the protest privately made. 



40 

nothing that is not of a kind to fill us with horror and 
disgust. 

67. It was now four or five years since the King and 
Cranmer had begun to hatch the project of the divorce" ; 
but, in the meanwhile, the King had kept Anne Boleyn, or, 
in more modern phrase, she had been *' under his protec- 
tion," for about three years. ^^ And here let me state 
that in Dr. Bayley's Life of Bishop Fisher it is positively 
asserted, that Anne Boleyn was the King's daughter, and 
that Lady Boleyn, her mother, said to the King, when he 
was about to marry Anne, " Sir, for the reverence of 
God, take heed what you do in marrying my daughter, for, 
if you record your own conscience well, she is your own 
daughter as well as mine." To which the King replied, 
** Whose daughter soever she is, she shall be my wife." 
Now, though I believe this fact, I do not give it as a thing 
the truth of which is undeniable. I find it in the writings 
of a man who was the eulogist (and justly) of the excellent 
Bishop Fisher, who suffered death because he stood firmly 
on the side of Queen Catherine. I believe it ; but I do 
not give it, as I do the other facts that I state, as what is 



" This is unjust to Cranmer. There is no evidence to show that 
Cranmer had anything to do with "the project." It was already deter- 
mined upon in the King's mind long before he was in a position to act as 
even counsellor in the matter. 

'* This was well known to all, and Henry had been warned by the Pope 
under pain of excommunication to send away Anne and take back the 
Queen. The reformer, Simon Grynseus, writing in 1531 to Martin Bucer, 
speaks of Anne's relations with Henry in the following plain terms : 
" whether she (Anne Boleyn) has children by the King, I do not know. 
She has not any acknowledged as such : they may probably be brought 
up in private (which if I am not mistaken, I have heard more than once), 
though there are those who positively deny that the King has any inter- 
course with her, which in my opinion is not at all likely." Original Letters^ 
Parker Soc, No. 256; if, Gayangos, Spanish State Papers^ iiL 
introduction, p. cxiii. 



41 

undeniably true." God knows, it is unnecessary to make 
the parties blacker than they are made by the Protestant 
historians themselves, in even a favourable record of their 
horrid deeds. 

68. The King had had Anne about three years " under 
his protection," when^ she became, for the first time, with 
child. There was, now, therefore, no time to be lost in 
order to " make an honest woman of her." A private 
marriage took place in January, 1533.^° As Anne's preg- 
nancy could not be long disguised, it became necessary to 
avow her marriage, and therefore it was also necessary to 
press onward the trial for the divorce, for it might have 
seemed rather awkward, even amongst '* Reformation ' 
people, for the King to have two wives at a time ! Now, 



" The terrible suggestion here given is not without a certain amount 
3f evidence to support it. The curious reader may consult the examination 
of the matter made by Mr. D. Lewis in hiis Introduction to Sander's Anglican 
Schism^ pp. xxxi-xliv. The result is given in the following words: " We 
have now the confession of Cranmer, of the two Houses of Parliament, 
and of the King, that the impediments [sc. to his union with Anne) were 
not only diriment, but also unknown. Admitting, then, that the impediment 
was unknown, we must shut out from the question the relations of Henry 
with Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, and with her daughter Mary, for they were 
not unknown — nothing remains but to accept the fearful story told not 1 y 
Dr. Sander only, nor by him before all others, and say that, at least by 
the confession of the King and both Houses of Parliament, Anne Boleyn 
was Henry's child " (p. xliv.). The learned Bollandist, Father Van Ortroy 
{Vie du B. Martyr Jean Fisher^ p. 268-9, ^ote), has upon examination 
of the evidence come to the same conclusion, although he says he can 
fully understand how it is that every argument has been brought to bear 
against so unwelcome a theory. He points out how as early as 1536 
this very charge was made in the street songs of Paris (p. 10, note i). 

2" The marriage ceremony was apparently performed by Roland Lee, 
very early in the morning of January 25, 1533 [cf. Archceologia, xviii., 
p. 81 ; Harpsfield The Pretended Divorce^ pp. 234, 235 ; Mrs. Hope, 
The First Divorce of Henry VI 11. , pp. 294-6). As Elizabeth was born 
within eight months, the date was subsequently falsified. 



42 

then, the famous ecclesiastical judge, Cranmer, had to play 
his part ; and if his hypocrisy did not make the devil blush, 
he could have no blushing faculties in him. Cranmer, in 
April, 1533, wrote a letter to the King, begging him, for the 
good of the nation and for the safety of hjs own soul, to 
grant his permission to try the question of the divorce, and 
beseeching him no longer to live in the peril attending an 
*' incestuous intercourse ! "^^ Matchless, astonishing hypo-> 
crite ! He knew, and the King knew that he knew, and he 
knew that the King knew that he knew it, that the King had 
been actually married to Anne three months before, she 
being with child at the time when he married her. 

69. The King graciously condescended to listen to this 
ghostly, advice of his pious primate, who was so anxious 
about the safety of his royal soul, and, without delay, he, 
as head of the Church, granted the ghostly father, Cranmer, 
who in violation of his clerical vows, had, in private, a 
woman of his own ; to this ghostly father the King granted a 
licence to hold a spiritual court for the trial of the divorce.^ 
Queen Catherine, who had been ordered to retire from the 
court, resided at this time at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, at 
a Uttle distance from Dunstable.^^ At this latter place 
Cranmer opened his court, and sent a citation to the Queen 
to appear before him, which citation she treated with the 
scorn that it deserved. When he had kept his ** court " 
open the number of days required by the law, he pro- 
nounced sentence against the Queen, declaring her marriage 



'^ Cranmer knew that Henry was actually married to Anne a fortnight 
after the ceremony had taken place {Archceologia, xviii., p. 81). The 
secret, however, was still kept until the Bulls for Cranmer's consecration 
should have been granted by the Pope. The marriage of Anne of course 
took place some months before Henry was divorced by Cranmer from 
Catherine. For Cranmer's letter see State Papers^ i., pp. 390, 391, 

"^ Gairdner, Calendar^ vi., p. 219. 

•• The court was opened on Saturday, May 10, 1533. 






43 

with the King null from the beginning ; and having done 
this, he closed his farcical court .^* We shall see him doing 
more jobs in the divorcing line ; but thus he finished the 
first. 

70. The result of this trial was, by this incomparable 
judge, made known to the King, whom this wonderful 
hypocrite gravely besought to submit himself with resigna- 
tion to the will of God, as declared to him in this decision 
of the spiritual court, acting according to the laws of holy 
Church !^ The pious and resigned King yielded to the 
admonition ; and then Cranmer held another court at 
Lambeth, at which he declared that the King had been 
lawfully married to Anne Boleyn, and that he now con- 
firmed the marriage by his pastoral and judicial authority, 
which he derived from the successors of the Apostles !^* 
We shall see him, by-and-by, exercising the same authority 
to declare this new marriage null and void from the begin- 
ning, and see him assist in bastardizing the fruit of it ; but 
we must now follow Anne Boleyn (whom the Protestant 
writers strain hard to whitewash) till we have seen the end 
of her. 

71. She was delivered of a daughter (who was afterwards 
Queen Elizabeth) at the end of eight months from the date 
of her marriage,^ This did not please the King, who 
wanted a son, and who was quite monster enough to be 
displeased with her on this account.^ The couple jogged 
on apparently without quarrelling for about three years ; 
a pretty long time, if we duly consider the many obstacles 

^ Cranmer's sentence was given on Friday, May 23. 

^ The terms of this letter had been agreed upon between the King and 
his Archbishop. For the document, see Wilkins' Concilia^ iii., p. 759 5 
Gairdner, Calendar^ vi., p. 230, et seq. 

'^ This sentence was delivered May 28, 1533. (Gairdner, «/ sup.t p 
330.) 

* Elizabeth was born on Sunday, September 7, 1533. 

* ^rs. Hope, The First Divorce of Henry VIII., p. 332, 



44 

which vice opposes to peace and happiness. The husband, 
however, had plenty of occupation, for being now " head 
of the Church," he had a deal to manage ; he had, poor 
man, to labour hard at making a new religion, new articles 
of faith, new rules of discipline, and he had new things of 
all sorts to prepare. Besides which, he had, as we shall 
see in the next number, some of the best men in his king- 
dom, and that ever lived in any kingdom or country, to 
behead, hang, rip up, and cut into quarters. He had, 
moreover, as we shall see, begun the grand work of con- 
fiscation, plunder and devastation. So that he could not 
have a great deal of time for family squabbles. 

72. If, however, he had no time to jar with Anne, he 
had no time to look . after her, which is a thing to be 
thought of when a man marries a woman half his own 
age; and that this " great female reformer," as some of 
the Protestant writers call her, wanted a little of husband- 
like vigilance, we are now going to see.** The freedom, 
or rather the looseness, of her manners, so very different 
from those of that virtuous queen whom the English 
court and nation had had before them as an example for 
so many years, gave offence to the more sober, and excited 
the mirth and set a-going the chat of persons of another 
description. In January, 1536, Queen Catherine died. 
She had been banished from the court. She had seen her 
marriage annulled by Cranmer, and her daughter and only 
surviving child bastardized by act of parliament ; and the 
husband, who had had five children by her, that " Reforma- 
tion " husband, had had the barbarity to keep her separated 
from, and never to suffer her, after her banishment, to set 



» Burnet (ed. Pocock), i., 280. "Their {i.e., the English Reformers), 
chief encouragement was from the Queen Anne who . . . was a known 
favourer of them. . . She used her most effectual endeavours with thf 
King to promote the Reformation." 



45 

her eyes on that only child ! She died, as she had lived, 
beloved and revered by every good man and woman in the 
kingdom, and was buried, amidst the sobbings and tears 
of a vast assemblage of the people, in the Abbey-church 
of Peterborough. 

73. The King, whose iron heart seems to have been 
softened, for a moment, by a most affecting letter, which 
she dictated to him from her death-bed, ordered the 
persons about him to wear mourning on the day of her 
burial.^ But our famous "great female reformer" not 
only did not wear mourning, but dressed herself out in the 
gayest and gaudiest attire ; expressed her unbounded joy ; 
and said that she was now in reality a queen ! Alas, for 
our " great female reformer ! " in just three months and 
sixteen days from this day of her exultation, she died 
herself; not, however, as the real queen had died, in her 
bed, deeply lamented by all the good, and without a soul 
on earth to impute to her a single fault, but on a scaffold, 
under a death-warrant signed by her husband, and charged 
with treason, adultery, and incest ! 

74. In the month of May, 1536, she was along with the 
King, amongst the spectators at a tilting-match at Green- 
wich,^^ when, being incautious, she gave to one of the 
combatants, who was also one of her paramours, a sign of 
her attachment, which seems onty to have confirmed the 
King in suspicions which he before entertained. He 
instantly quitted the place, returned to Westminster, 
ordered her to be confined at Greenwich that night, and 
to be brought by water to Westminster the next day. 
But she was met, by his order, on the river, and conveyed 



'" Ibid.^ p. 309 : " Queen Anne did not carry her death so decently, for 
she expressed too much joy at it, both in her carriage and dress." Hall, 
The Union of the Houses of Lancaster and Yorke, p. 818, says, "Queen 
Anne wore yellow for the mourning." 

^' Burnet ut suj)., p. 316. This was on May i, 1536. 



46 

to the Tower; and, as if it were to remind her of the 
injustice which she had so mainly assisted in committing 
against the late virtuous queen ; as it were to say to her, 
" see, after all, God is just," she was imprisoned in the 
very room in which she had slept the night before her 
coronation ! 

75. From the moment of her imprisonment her be- 
haviour indicated anything but conscious innocence. She 
was charged with adultery committed with four gentlemen 
of the King's household, and with incest with her brother, 
Lord Rochford, and she was, of course, charged with 
treason, those being acts of treason by law.*® They were* 
all found guilty, and all put to death. But, before Anne 
was executed, our friend, Thomas Cranmer, had another 
tough job to perform. The King, who never did things by 
halves, ordered, as ** head of the Church," the Archbishop 
to hold his " spiritual court," and to divorce him from 
Anne ! One would think it impossible that a man, that 
anything bearing the name of man, should have consented 
to do such a thing, should not have perished before a slow 
fire rather than do it. What ! he had, as we have seen in 
paragraph 70, pronounced the marriage with Anne *' to be 
lawful, and had confirmed it by his authority, judicial and 
pastoral, which he derived from the successors of the 
Apostles." How was he now, then, to annul this 
marriage ? How was he to declare it unlawful ?^ 



I 



" Among the judges of those charged as Anne's accomplices, was 
Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, Anne's father, and the verdict of guilty was 
given May 12, 1537. Although he only sat as judge on the supposed accom- 
plices, by condemning them he tacitly condemned his own daughter. 

Stow, p. 573. " May 17, the Lord Rochford, brother of the Queen, 
Henry Norrice, Mark Smeton, William Brierton and Francis Weston, 
, . . were beheaded on Tower Hill." 

■ Cranmer had an interview with Anne in the Tower the day after the 
sentence of death had been passed upon her (Gairdner, Calender, No. 890) 
What transpired is unknown ; but it seems probable that the Archbishop's 



47 

76. He cited the King and Queen to appear in his 
"court"! (Oh! that court!) His citation stated that 
their marriage had been unlawful, that they were living in 
adultery ,^^ and that, for the ** salvation of their souls," they 
should come and show cause why they should not be 
separated. They were just going to be separated most 
effectually; for this was on May 17, and Anne, who had 
been condemned to death on the 15th, was to be, and was, 
executed on the 19th ! They both obeyed this citation, 
and appeared before him by their proctors ; and, after 
having heard these, Cranmer, who, observe, afterwards 
drew up the Book of Common Prayer, wound up the blas- 
phemous farce by pronouncing, " in the name of Christ 
and for the honour of God," that the marriage " was, and 
always had been, null and void "!^^ Good God ! But we 
must not give way to exclamations, or they will interrupt 
us at every step. Thus was the daughter, Elizabeth, 
bastardized^® by the decision of the very man who had not 
only pronounced her mother's marriage lawful, but who 

visit was in preparation for the ecclesiastical court to be held the next day, 
(cf. Stevenson, Cranmer and Anne Boleyn, p. 33). 

'* At the Archbishop's court held at Lambeth on May 18, Dr. Richard 
Sampson represented Henry, and Nicholas Wotton and Dr. John Barbor 
the Queen, Cranmer gave judgment that the marriage between Henry and 
Anne "was and always had been null and invalid." This sentence was 
signed by both Houses of Convocation on June 28 (Wilkins' Concilia^ iii., 
p. 804, where the document is wrongly said to relate to the divorce of 
Anne of Cleves). The Parliament subsequently (28 Henry VHL, c. 7) 
declared the grounds of the judgment to be " certain just and lawful 
impediments unknown " when the marriage took place, "which were con- 
fessed by the said Lady Anne " to the Archbishop " sitting judicially." 

^^ Burnet, ut sup., 326. " The two sentences that were passed upon the 
Queen, the one of •attainder for adultery, the other of divorce because of 
a pre-contract, did so contradict one another, that it was apparent one, 
if not both of them, must be unjust." 

*" By the same act of Parliament (28 Henry VHI., c. 7) both Mary and 
Elizabeth are declared bastards, and the crown settled upon the issue of 



48 

had been the contriver of that marriage ! And yet _ 
Burnet has the impudence to say that Granmer " appears ■ 
to have done every thing with a good conscience " ! 

77. On the 19th Anne was beheaded in the Tower, put 
into an elm coffin, and buried there. At the place of 
execution she did not pretend that she was innocent ; ^^ 
and there appears to me to be very little doubt of her 
having done some at least of the things imputed to her : 
but, if her marriage with the King had " always been null 
and void " ; that is to say, if she had never been married 
to him, how could she, by her commerce with other men, 
have been guilty of treason ? On the 15th she is con- 
demned as the wife of the King, and on the 17th she is 
pronounced never to have been his wife, and on the 19th 
she is executed for having been his unfaithful wife ! How- 
ever, as to the effect which this event has upon the charac- 
ter of the " Reformation," it signifies not a straw whether 
she were guilty or innocent of the crimes now laid to her 
charge ; for, if she were innocent, how are we to describe 
the monsters who brought her to the block ? How are we 
to describe that " head of the Church " and that Arch- 
bishop, who had now the management of the religious 
affairs of England ? It is said that the evening before 
her execution, she begged the lady of the lieutenant of 
the Tower to go to the Princess Mary, and to beg her to 
pardon her for the many wrongs she had done her. There 

Jane Seymour, and the people released from the oath they had taken to 
Anne. [cf. Sander, The Anglican Schism^ ed. Lewis, pp. 230-1.) 

^ At the scafifold Anne appears to have made no confession. On the 
contrary, she is described by a foreigner who was present, as saying, 
" Everything- they have accused me of is false, and the principal reason I 
am to die is Jane Seymour, as I was the cause of the ill that befell my 
mistress," Queen Catherine {Chronicle of King Henry VIII., ed. M. A. 
Sharp Hume, p. 70). A study of the documents now brought to light 
makes it appear unlikely that Anne was guilty of the crimes charged 
against her. 



49 

were others to whom she had done wrongs. She had been 
the cause, and the guilty cause, of breaking the heart of 
the rightful queen ; she had caused the blood of More and 
of Fisher to be shed ; and she had been the promoter of 
Cranmer, and his aider and abettor in all those crafty 
and pernicious councils, by acting upon which an obstinate 
and hard-hearted King had plunged the kingdom into 
confusion and blood. The King, in order to show his total 
disregard for her, and, as it were, to repay her for her con- 
duct on the day of the funeral of Catherine, dressed himself 
in white on the day of her execution ; ^ and, the very next 
day, was married to Jane Seymour, at Marevell Hall, in 
Hampshire. 

78. Thus, then my friends, we have seen that the thing 
called the " Reformation " was engendered in lust, and 
brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy. How it pro- 
ceeded in devastating and shedding innocent blood we 
have yet to see. 



1 



^ Anne Boleyn was put to death May 19, 1536, and Jane Seymour was 
married on May 20, the day after Anne was executed. Cranmer granted 
Henry a dispensation to marry Jane Seymour. 



so 



CHAPTER III. 

79. No Englishman worthy of that name, worthy of^ 
a name which carries along with it sincerity and a lovej 
of justice ; no real Englishman can have contemplated the 
foul deeds, the base hypocrisy, the flagrant injustice, ex- 
posed in the foregoing pages, without blushing for his 
country. What man with an honourable sentiment in his 
mind is there who does not almost wish to be a foreigner, 
rather than be the countryman of Cranmer and of Henry 
Vni. ? If, then, such be our feelings already, what are 
they to be by the time that we have got through those 
scenes of tyranny, blood, and robbery, to which the deeds 
which we have already witnessed were merely a prelude ? 

80. Sunk, however, as the country was by the mem- 
bers of the Parliament, hoping to share, as they finally 
did, in the plunder of the Church and the poor ; selfish 
and servile as was the conduct of the courtiers, the king's 
councillors, and the people's representatives ; still there 
were some men to raise their voices against the illegality 
and cruelty of the divorce of Catherine, as well as against 
that great preparatory measure of plunder, the taking of 
the spiritual supremacy from the Pope and giving it to the 
King. The bishops, all but one, which one we shall pre- 
sently see dying on the scaffold rather than abandon his 
integrity, were terrified into acquiescence, or, at least, into 
silence. But there were many of the parochial clergy, and 



51 

a large part of the monks and friars, who were not thus 
acquiescent or silent. These, by their sermons and by 
their conversations, made the truth pretty generally known 
to the people at large ; and though they did not succeed 
in preventing the calamities which they saw approaching, 
they rescued the character of their country from the in- 
famy of silent submission. 

8i. Of all the duties of the historian, the most sacred is 
that of recording the conduct of those who have stood for- 
ward to defend helpless innocence against the attacks of 
powerful guilt. This duty calls on me to make particular 
mention of the conduct of the two friars, Peyto and 
Elstow. The former, preaching before the King at Green- 
wich,^ just previous to his marriage with Anne, and taking 
for his text the passage in the first book of Kings, where 
Micaiah prophecies against Ahab, who was surrounded 
with flatterers and lying prophets, said, '* I am that 
Micaiah, whom you will hate because I must tell you 
truly that this marriage is unlawful ; and I know that I 
shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the water of 
sorrow ; yet, because the Lord hath put it in my mouth 
I must speak it. Your flatterers are the four hundred 
prophets, who, in the spirit of lying, seek to deceive you. 
But take good heed lest you, being seduced, find Ahab's 
punishment, which was to have his blood licked up by 
dogs. It is one of the greatest miseries in princes to be 
daily abused by flatterers." The King took this reproof 
in silence ; but the next Sunday a Dr. Curwin preached in 
the same place before the King, and having called Peyto 
dog, slanderer, base beggarly friar, rebel and traitor, and 

' Peyto preached, apparently, on May ii, 1533. This was, of course, 
after the King's marriage with Anne, which took place in the previous 
January; but it was prior to the declaration of his divorce from Catherine, 
which was given by Cranmer on Friday, May 23. In fact the Archbishop's 
court for the trial of Henry's marriage question had been opened at 
Dunstable on Saturday, May 10, the day before Peyto's sermon. 



I 



52 

having said that he had fled for fear and shame, Elstow, 
who was present and who. was^ a fellow-friar of Peyto, 
called out aloud to Curwin and said, " Good sir, you know 
that Father Peyto is now gone to a provincial council at — 
Canterbury, and not fled for fear of you ; for to-morrowB 
he will return. In the meanwhile I am here as another 
Micaiah, and will lay down my life to prove all those 
things true which he hath taught out of Holy Scripture ; 
and to this combat I challenge thee before God and all 
equal judges ; even unto thee, Curwin, I say, which art one 
of the four hundred false prophets into whom the spirit 
of lying is entered, and seekest by adultery to establish a 
succession, betraying the King into endless perdition." 

82. Stowe, who relates this in his Chronicle, says that 
Elstow " waxed hot, so that they could not make him 
cease his speech until the King himself bade him hold his 
peace. "^ The two friars were brought the next day before 
the King's council, who rebuked them and told them that 
they deserved to be put into a sack and thrown into the 
Thames. Whereupon Elstow said smiling, "Threaten 
these things to rich and dainty persons, who are clothed ■ 
in purple, fare deliciously, and have their chiefest hope in 
this world ; for we esteem them not, but are joyful that, for 
the discharge of our duty, we are driven hence : and, with 
thanks to God, we know the way to heaven to be as ready 
by water as by land."^ 

83. It is impossible to speak with sufficient admiration 
of the conduct of these men. Ten thousand victories by 
land or sea would not bespeak so much heroism in the 
winners of those victories as was shown by these friars. 

^ Stowe, Chronicle, p. 562. m 

* Stowe puts this threat into the mouth of Henry Bourchier, Earl of 
Essex. Harpsfield {The Pretejjded Divorce, ed. Camden Society, p. 205) 
says, *' of this sermon and answer myself have heard the said Father 
Elstowe report." 



I 



53 

If the bishops, or only a fourth part of them, had shown 
equal courage, the tyrant would have stopped in that 
career which was now on the eve of producing so many 
horrors. The stand made against him by these two poor 
friars was the only instance of bold and open resistance 
until he had actually got into his murders and robberies ; 
and, seeing that there never was yet found even a Protes- 
tant pen, except the vile pen of Burnet, to offer so much 
as an apology for the deeds of this tyrant, one would think 
that the heroic virtue of Peyto and Elstow ought to be 
sufficient to make us hesitate before we talk of " monkish 
ignorance and superstition." Recollect, that there was no 
wild fanaticism in the conduct of those men, that they 
could not be actuated by any selfish motive, that they stood 
forward in the cause of morality, and in defence of a person 
whom they had never personally known, and that, too 
with the certainty of incurring the most severe punish- 
ments, if not death itself. Before their conduct how the 
heroism of the Hampdens and the Russells sinks from our 
sight ! 

84. We now come to the consideration of that copious 
source of blood, the suppression of the Pope's supremacy. 
To deny the King's supremacy was made high treason, and 
to refuse to take an oath ac4<nowledging that supremacy 
was deemed a denial of it. Sir Thomas More, who was 
the Lord Chancellor, and John Fisher, who was Bishop of 
Rochester, were put to death for refusing to take this 
oath.* Of all the men in England these were the two 
most famed for learning, for integrity, for piety, and for 

* The effect of the indictment of Bishop Fisher was " that he mali- 
ciously, traitorously, and falsely had said these words, ' The Kinge, our 
soveraigne lord, is not supreame head in earth of the Church of England' " 
{Fie du Bienheiirettx Martyr Jean Fisher^ ed. Fr. Van Ortroy, S. J., p. 
319). The cause of Sir Thomas More's death was the same. Bishop 
Fisher suffered on Tuesday, June 22, 1535, and Sir Thomas More upon 
July 6 of the same year. 






54 

long and faithful services to the King and his father. It is 
no weak presumption in favour of the Pope's supremacy 
that these two men, who had exerted their talents to pre- 
vent its suppression, laid their heads on the block rather 
than sanction that suppression. But knowing, as we do, 
that it is the refusal of our Catholic fellow subjects to take 
this same oath rather than take which More and Fisher 
died ; knowing that this is the cause of all that cruel treat- 
ment which the Irish people have so long endured, and to 
put an end to which ill treatment they are now so arduously 
struggling ; knowing that it is on this very point that the 
fate of England herself may rest in case of another war ; 
knowing these things, it becomes us to inquire with care 
what is the nature and what are the effects of this papal 
supremacy, in order to ascertain whether it be favourable 
or otherwise to true religion and to civil liberty. 

85. The Scripture tells us that Christ's Church was to 
be one. We, in repeating the Apostles' Creed, say, " I 
believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Catholic, as we 
have seen in paragraph 3, means universal. And how can 
we believe in a universal Church without believing that 
that Church is one, and under the direction of one head ? 
In the Gospel of St. John, chap, x., v. 16, Christ says, that 
He is the good shepherd, and that " there shall be one fold 
and one shepherd." He afterwards deputes Peter to be 
the shepherd in His stead. In the same Gospel, chap, xvii., 
V. 10 and II, Christ says, "And all mine are thine, and 
thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I 
am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I 
come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own 
name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be 
one, as we are." Saint Paul, in his second Epistle to the 
Corinthians, says, "Finally, brethren, farewell: be perfect, 
be of good comfort, be of one mind." The same Apostle, 
in his Epistle to the Ephesians, chap, iv., v. 3, says, 
•* Endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond 



55 

of peace. There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are 
called in one hope of your calling ; one Lord, one Faith, 
one Baptism, one God and Father of all." Again, in his 
first Epistle to the Corinthians, chap, i., v. lo, " Now I 
beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be 
no divisions amongst you ; but that ye be perfectly joined 
together in the same mind and the same judgment." 

86. But, besides these evidences of Scripture, besides 
our own creed, which we say we have from the Apostles, 
there is the reasonableness of the thing. It is perfectly 
monstrous to suppose that there can be two true faiths. 
It cannot be : one of the two must be false. And will any 
man say, that we ought to applaud a measure which, of 
necessity, must produce an indefinite number of faiths ? 
If our eternal salvation depend upon our believing the 
truth, can it be good to place people in a state of necessity 
to have different beliefs ? And does not that which takes 
away the head of the Church inevitably produce such a 
state of necessity ? How is the faith of all nations to 
fontinue to be one, if there be in every nation a head of 
the Church, who is to be appealed to, in the last resort, as 
to all questions, as to all points of dispute, which may 
arise? How, if this be the case, is there to be " one fold 
and one shepherd " ? How is there to be "one faith and 
one baptism " ? How are the " unity of the spirit and the 
bond of peace " to be preserved ? We shall presently see 
what unity and what peace there were in England, the 
moment the King became the head of the Church. 

87. To give this supremacy to a King, is, in our case, to 
give it occasionally to a woman ; and still more frequently 
to a child, even to a baby. We shall very soon see it de- 
volve on a boy, nine years of age, and we shall see the 
monstrous effects that it produced. 

88. As to the Pope's interference with the authority of 
the King or State, the sham plea set up was, and is, that he 



S6 



divided the government with the King, to whom belonged 
the sole supremacy with regard to everything within his 
realm. This doctrine, pushed home, would shut out Jesus 
Christ Himself, and make the King an object of adoration. 
Spiritual and temporal authority are perfectly distinct in 
their nature, and ought so to be kept in their exercise ; and 
that too, not only for the sake of religion, but also for the 
sake of civil liberty. It is curious enough that the Pro- 
testant sectarians, while they most cordially unite with the 
established clergy in crying out against the Pope for 
*' usurping " the King's authority, and against the Catho- 
lics for countenancing that " usurpation," take special care 
to deny that this same King has any spiritual supremacy 
over themselves ! The Presbyterians have their Synod, 
the Methodists their Conference, and all the other motley 
mongrels some head or other of their own. All these 
heads exercise an absolute power over their members. 
They give or refuse their sanction to the appointment 
of the bawlers ; they remove them, or break them, at 
pleasure. Strange enough, or rather impudent enough, 
is it, in these sects, to refuse to acknowledge any spiritual . 
supremacy in the King, while they declaim against the 
Catholics because they will not take an oath acknowledg- 
ing that supremacy : and is it not, then, monstrous, that 
persons belonging to these sects can sit in Parliament, can 
sit in the King's Council, can be generals, or admirals, or 
judges, while from all these posts, and many others, the 
Cathohcs are excluded, and that, too, only because their 
consciences, their honourable adherence to the religion of 
their fathers, will not allow them to acknowledge this 
supremacy ; but bids them to belong to the " one fold 
and the one shepherd," and to know none other than '' one 
Lord, one faith, and one baptism " ? 

89. But the Pope was a foreigner exercising spiritual 
power in England ; and this the hypocrites pretended was 
a degradation to the King and country. This was some- 



57 

thing to tickle John Bull, who has, and I dare say always 
has had, an instinctive dislike to foreigners. But, in the 
first place, the Pope might be an Englishman, and we 
have, in paragraph 42, seen one instance of this. Then, 
how could it be a thing degrading to this nation, when the 
same thing existed with regard to all other nations ? Was 
King Alfred, and were all the long line of kings, for 900 
years, degraded beings ? Did those who really conquered 
France, not by subsidies and bribes but by arms ; did they 
not understand what was degrading and what was not ? 
Do not the present French people understand this matter ? 
Are the sovereignty of the former and the freedom of the 
latter less perfect because the papal supremacy is distinctly 
acknowledged and has full effect in France ? And if the 
Synod in Scotland can exercise its supremacy in England, 
and the Conference in England exercise its supremacy in 
Scotland, in Ireland, and in the Colonies ; if this can be 
without any degradation of king or people, why are we to 
look upon the exercise of the papal supremacy as degrad- 
ing to either ? 

go. Aye ; but there was the money. The money of 
England went to the Pope. Popes cannot live, and keep 
courts and ambassadors, and maintain great state, without 
money, any more than other people. A part of the money 
of England went to the Pope; but a part also of that 
of every other Christian nation took the same direction. 
This money was not, however, thrown away. It was so 
much given for the preservation of unity of faith, peace, 
good will, and charity and morality. We shall, in the 
broils that ensued, and in the consequent subsidies and 
bribes to foreigners, soon see that the money which went 
to the Pope was extremely well laid out. But how we 
Protestants strain at a gnat, while we swallow camels by 
whole caravans ! We have since given more to foreigners 
in one single year than the Popes ever received from our 
ancestors in four centuries. We have bowed, for years. 



58 



to a Dutchman, who was no heir to the crown any more"^ 
than one of our workhouse paupers, and who had not one 
drop of English blood in his veins; and we have sent 
annually to Hanoverians and other foreigners, under the 
name of half-pay, more money than was ever sent to the 
Pope in twenty years. From the time of the " Glorious 
Revolution " we have been paying two thousand pounds 
a year to the heirs of '* Marshal Schomberg," who came 
over to help the Dutchman ;* and this is, mind, to be paid 
as long as there are such heirs of Marshal Schomberg, 
which, to use the elegant, and logical, and philosophical 
phrase of our great ** Reformation " poet, will, I dare say, 
be " for ever and a day." And have we forgotten the 
Bentincks, and all the rest of the Dutch tribe, who had 
estates of the crown heaped upon them ? and do we talk, 
then, of the degradation and the loss of money occasioned 
by the supremacy of the Pope ? It is a notorious fact, that 
not a German soldier would have been wanted in this king- 
dom, during the last war, had it not been for the disturbed 
and dangerous state of Ireland, in which the German troops 
were very much employed. We have long been paying, 
and have now to pay, and shall long have to pay, upwards 
of a hundred thousand pounds a year, to the half-pay 
officers of these troops, one single penny of which we now 
should not have had to pay if we had dispensed with the 
oath of supremacy from the Catholics. Every one to his 
taste ; but, for my part, if I must pay foreigners for keeping 
me in order, I would rather pay " pence to Peter " than 
pounds to Hessian Grenadiers. Alien Priories, the estab- 
lishment of which was for the purpose of inducing learned 
persons to come and live in England, have been a copious 



* Schomberg came over with William of Orange as second in com- 
mand. The following year, 1689, he was made a Knight of the Garter, 
and created successively baron, marquis and duke, receiving from the 
House of Commons a vote of ;^ 100, 000. 



^1 

•e I! 



59 

source of declamatory complaint. But, leaving their utility 
out of the question, I, for my particular part, prefer Alien 
Priories to Alien Armies, from which latter this country 
has never been, except for very short intervals, wholly 
free, from the day that the former were suppressed. I 
wish not to set myself up as a dictator in matters of taste ; 
but I must take leave to say, that I prefer the cloister to 
the barrack ; the chanting of matins to the reveille by the 
drum ; the cowl to the brass-fronted hairy cap ; the shaven 
crown to the moustache, though the latter be stiffened with 
black-ball ; the rosary, with the cross appendant, to the 
belt with its box of bullets ; and, beyond all measure, I 
prefer the penance to the point of the bayonet. One or 
the other of these sets of things, it would seem, we must 
have ; for, before the *' Reformation," England never knew 
and never dreamed of such a thing as a standing soldier; 
since that event she has never, in reality, known what it 
was to be without such soldiers ; till at last, a thundering 
standing army, even in time of profound peace, is openly 
avowed to be necessary to the " preservation of our happy 
constitution in Church and State " ! 

91. However, this money part of the affair is now over 
with regard to the Pope. No one proposes to give him 
any money at all, in any shape whatever. The Catholics 
believe that the unity of their Church would be destroyed, 
that they would, in short, cease to be Catholics if they 
were to abjure his supremacy ; and, therefore, they will 
not abjure it : they insist that their teachers shall receive 
their authority from him ; and what do they, with regard 
to the Pope, insist upon more than is insisted upon and 
acted upon by the Presbyterians, with regard to their 
Synod ? 

92. Lastly, as to this supremacy of the Pope, what was 
its effect with regard to civil liberty ; that is to say, with 
regard to the security, the rightful enjoyment, of men's 
property and lives ? We shall, by-and-by, see that civil 



6o 

liberty fell by the same tyrannical hands that suppressed 
the Pope's supremacy. But whence came our civil liberty ? 
Whence came those laws of England which Lord Coke 
calls ** the birth-right " of Englishmen, and which each of 
the States of America declare, in their constitutions, to be 
** the birth-right of the people thereof ? " Whence came 
these laws ? Are they of Protestant origin ? The bare 
question ought to make the revilers of the Catholics hang 
their heads for shame. Did Protestants establish the 
three courts and the twelve judges, to which establishment, 
though, like all other human institutions, it has sometimes 
worked evil, England owes so large a portion of her fame 
and her greatness ? Oh no ! This institution arose when 
the Pope's supremacy was in full vigour. It was not a 
gift from Scotchmen, or Dutchmen, or Hessians, from 
Lutherans, Calvinists, or Huguenots, but was the work of 
our own brave and wise English Catholic ancestors ; and 
the present Chief Justice is the heir, in an unbroken line 
of succession, to that Bench which was erected by Alfred, 
who was, at the very same time, most zealously engaged 
in the founding of churches and of monasteries. 

93. If, however, we still insist that the Pope's supremacy 
and its accompanying circumstances produced ignorance, 
superstition and slavery, let us act the part of sincere, 
consistent and honest men. Let us knock down, or blow 
up, the cathedrals and colleges and old churches : let us 
sweep away the three courts, the twelve judges, the cir- 
cuits, and the jury boxes; let us demoHsh all that we 
inherit from those whose religion we denounce, and whose 
memory we affect so heartily to despise ; let us demolish all 
this, and we shall have left — all our own — the capacious jails 
and penitentiaries, the stock-exchange, the hot, ankle 
and knee-swelling and lung-destroying cotton-factories ; 
the whiskered standing army and its splendid barracks; 
the parson-captains, parson-lieutenants, parson-ensigns and 
parson-justices, the poor-rates and the pauper-houses; 



I 



6i 

and, by no means forgetting that blessing which is pecu> 
liarly and doubly and '' gloriously " Protestant, — the 
National Debt. Ah 1 people of England, how have you 
been deceived ! 

94. But, for argument's sake, counting the experience of 
antiquity for nothing, let us ask ourselves what a chance 
civil liberty can stand if all power, spiritual and lay, be 
lodged in the hands of the same man ? That man must 
be a despot, or his power must be undermined by an 
oligarchy or by something. If the President or the Con- 
gress of the United States had a spiritual supremacy ; if 
they appointed the bishops and ministers, though they 
have no benefices to give and would have no tenths and 
first fruits to receive, their government would be a tyranny 
in a very short time. Montesquieu observes that the 
people of Spain and Portugal would have been absolute 
slaves without the power of the Church, which is, in such 
a case, ** the only check to arbitrary sway." Yet how long 
have we had " papal usurpation and tyranny " dinned in 
our ears ! This charge against the Pope surpasseth all 
understanding. How was the Pope to be a usurper or 
tyrant in England ? He had no fleet, no army, no judge, 
no sheriff, no justice of the peace, not even a single 
constable or beadle at his command. We have been told 
of " the thunders of the Vatican " till we have almost 
believed that the Pope's residence was in the skies ; and, 
if we had believed it quite, the belief would not have sur- 
passed in folly our belief in numerous other stories hatched 
by the gentry of the '* Reformation." The truth is, that 
the Pope had no power but that which he derived from 
the free will of the people. The people were frequently on 
his side in his contests with kings ; and by this means, 
they, in numerous instances, preserved their rights against 
the attempts of tyrants. If the Pope had had no power there 
must have sprung up an oligarchy, or a something else, to 
check the power of the king ; or every king might have 



62 

been a Nero, if he would. We shall soon see a worse than 
Nero in Henry VIII. ; we shall soon see him laying all 
law prostrate at his feet ; and plundering his people, down 
even to the patrimony of the poor. But reason says that 
it must be so ; and though this spiritual power be now 
nominally lodged in the hands of the King, to how many 
tricks and contrivances have we resorted, and some of 
them most disgraceful and fatal ones, in order to prevent 
him from possessing the reality of this power ? We are 
obliged to effect by influence and by. faction — that is to 
say, by means indirect, disguised, and frequently flagiti- 
ously immoral, not to say almost seditious into the bargain 
— that which was effected by means direct, avowed, frank, 
honest and loyal. It is curious enough that, while all 
Protestant ministers are everlastingly talking about 
*' papal usurpation and tyranny," all of them, except those 
who profit from the establishment, talk not less incessantly 
about what they have no scruple to call ** that two-headed 
monster, Church and State." What a monster would it 
have been then, if the Catholics had submitted to the 
** Veto ; " — that is to say, to give the king a rejecting voice 
in the appointment of Cathohc bishops, and thus to make 
him, who is already " the Defender of the Faith" against 
which he protests, an associate with the Sovereign Pontiff 
in carrying on the affairs of that Church to which the law 
strictly forbids him to belong. 

95. Thus, then, this so much abused papal supremacy 
was a most salutary thing : it was the only check, then 
existing, on despotic power, besides being absolutely 
necessary to that unity of faith without which there could 
be nothing worthy of the name of a Catholic Church. To 
abjure this supremacy was an act of apostacy, and also an 
act of base abandonment of the rights of the people. To 
require it of any man was to violate Magna Charta and all 
the laws of the land ; and to put men to death for refusing 
to comply with the request was to commit unqualified 



63 

murder. Yet without such murder, without shedding 
innocent blood, it was impossible to effect the object. 
Blood must flow. Amongst the victims to this act of out- 
rageous tyranny were Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher. 
The former had been the Lord High Chancellor for many 
years.^ The character given of him by his contemporaries, 
and by every one to the present day, is that of as great 
perfection for learning, integrity, and piety, as it is possible 
for a human being to possess. He was the greatest lawyer 
of his age, a long-tried and most faithful servant of the 
King and his father, and was, besides, so highly distin- 
guished beyond men in general for his gentleness and 
humility of manners, as well as for his talents and abilities, 
that his murder gave a shock to all Europe. Fisher was 
equally eminent in point of learning, piety, and integrity. 
He was the only surviving privy-councillor of the late King, 
whose mother (the grandmother of Henry VIH.), having 
outlived her son and daughter, besought, with her dying 
breath, the 5^oung king to listen particularly to the advice 
of this learned, pious, and venerable prelate ; and, until 
that advice thwarted his brutal passions, he was in the 
habit of saying that no other prince could boast of a sub- 
ject to be compared with Fisher. He used, at the council- 
board, to take him by the hand and call him his father ; 
marks of favour and affection which the bishop repaid by 
zeal and devotion which knew no bounds other than those 
prescribed by his duty to God, his king, and his country. 
But that sacred duty bade him object to the divorce and to 
the King's supremacy ; and then the tyrant, forgetting, at 
once, all his services, all his devotion, all his unparalleled 
attachment, sent him to the block, after fifteen months of 
imprisonment, during which he lay, worse than a common 
felon, buried in filth and almost destitute of food ; seni 



* Sir Thomas More became Chancellor in 1529. 



64 

him, who had been his boast, and whom he had called his 
father, to perish under the axe ; dragged him forth, with 
Hmbs tottering under him, his venerable face and hoaryMj 
locks begrimed, and his nakedness scarcely covered with" 
the rags left on his body ;' dragged him thus forth to the 
scaffold, and, even when the life was gone, left him to lie 
on that scaffold like a dead dog !® Savage monster ! Rage 
stems the torrent of our tears, hurries us back to the horrid 
scene, and bids us look about us for a dagger to plunge into 
the heart of the tyrant. 

96. And yet, the calculating, cold-blooded, and brazen 
Burnet has the audacity to say that "such a man as 
Henry VIII. was necessary to bring about the Reforma- 
tion ! " He means, of course, that such measures as those 
of Henry were necessary; and, if they were necessary, 
what must be the nature and tendency of that ** Reforma- 
tion" ? 

97. The work of blood was now begun, and it proceeded 
with steady pace. All who refused to take the oath of 



' The earliest account of Blessed John Fisher states that on preparation 
for his death he dressed himself "in a clean white shirt and all the best 
apparel he had, as cleanly brusht as might be" and then put on "his 
furred typpet " (Van Ortroy, Vie du B.Jean Fisher, pp. 338-9). Of course 
the account given in the text was not intended to be anything but rhetorical. 
It is true that he was so weak that " he was scant able to goe downe the 
stayres " and had then to be carried on a chair to the scaffold {ibid., 340-2). 

^ *' Then was his gowne and typpet taken from him, and he stood in his 
dooblet and hose in sight of all the people. . . . There was to be seen a 
longe, leane, and slender body, having on it little other substance besides the 
skynn and bones" {ibid., p. 343). The same account says that the 
" headless carcass was left naked upon the scaffold " all day guarded by 
soldiers. In the evening two of the guards carried it upon a halbert and 
tumbled it into a grave just as it was " without either sheete or other 
accustomed thinge belonging to a Christian man's buryall" {ibid., p. 348). 
The same account of the way the body was left naked all day on the 
scaffold is given by the Bishop of Faenza writing from Paris (Gair<iner, 
Calendar, viii., No. 985), and by Cardinal Pole {Apologia, § 20). See also 
Father Bridgett's Life of B. John Fisher^ p. 400. 



I 



65 

supremacy, — that is to say, all who refused to become 
apostates, — were considered and treated as traitors, and 
made to suffer death accompanied with every possible 
cruelty and indignity. As a specimen of the works of 
Burnet's necessary reformer, and to spare the reader repe- 
tition on the subject, let us take the treatment of John 
Houghton, prior of the Charterhouse in London, which 
was then a convent of Carthusian monks. This prior, for 
having refused to take the oath, which, observe, he could 
not take without committing perjury, was dragged to 
Tyburn. He was scarcely suspended when the rope was 
cut, and he fell alive on the ground. His clothes were 
then stripped off; his bowels were ripped up ; his heart 
and entrails were torn from his body and flung into a fire ; 
his head was cut from his body ; the body was divided into 
quarters and parboiled ; the quarters were then subdivided, 
and hung up in different parts of the city ; and one arm 
was nailed to the wall over the entrance into the 
monastery ! • 

98. Such were the means which Burnet said were 
necessary to introduce the Protestant religion into England ! 
How different, alas ! from the means by which the Catholic 
religion had been introduced by Pope Gregory and Saint 
Austin ! These horrid butcheries were perpetrated, mind, 
under the primacy of Fox's great martyr, Cranmer, and 
with the active agency of another ruffian, named Thomas 
Cromwell, whom we shall soon see sharing with Cranmer 
the work of plunder, and finally sharing, too, in his dis- 
graceful end. 

99 . Before we enter on the grand subject of plunder, 
which was the mainspring of the " Reformation," we must 
follow the King and his primate through their murders of 
Protestants as well as Catholics. But first, we must see 



^ May 4, 1535. For the account of this see Gairdner, Calendar viii., No. 
726. Cf. Froude, History^ ii., p. 358, seqq, 

5 



66 

how the Protestant religion arose, and how it stood at this 
juncture. Whence the term Protestant came, we have 
seen in paragraph 3. It was a name given to those J I 
who declared, or protested, against the Catholic or univer- ■ 
sal Church. This work of protesting was begun in 
Germany, in the year 15 17, by a friar whose name was 
Martin Luther, and who belonged to a convent of Augustin 
^iars in the electorate of Saxony. At this time the Pope 
had authorised the preaching of certain indulgences, and 
this business was entrusted to the order of Dominicans, 
and not to the order to which Luther belonged.^** 

100. All accounts agree that Luther was a profligate 
man." To change his religion he might have thought 
himself called by his conscience ; but conscience could not 
call upon him to be guilty of all the abominable deeds of 
which he stands convicted even by his own confessions ; of 
which I shall speak more fully when 1 come to the proper 
place for giving an account of the numerous sects into 
which the Protestants were soon divided, and of the fatal 
change which was by this innovation of religion produced, 
even according to the declaration of the Protestant leaders 
themselves, in the morals of the people and the state of 
society. But, just observing that the Protestant sects had, 
at the time we are speaking of, spread themselves over a 
part of Germany, and had got into Switzerland and some 
other states of the Continent, we must now, before we 
state more particulars relating to Luther and the sects 
that he gave rise to, see how the King of England dealt 
with those of his subjects who had adopted the heresy. 

'" The publication in 1517 of the indulgences granted to such as con- 
tributed to the building of St. Peter's in Rome was given to John Tetzel 
of Leipzig, a Dominican friar, by the Archbishop of Mentz. Luther took 
the lead in the opposition, but evidently at first without any intention of 
proceeding to the lengths to which he afterwards went. 

" Erasmus wrote of him : *'It was thought that Luther was the hero of 
the tragedy, but for my part I regard him as playing the chief part in a 
comedy, that has ended, like all comedies, in a marriage." 



loi. The Protestants immediately began to disagree 
amongst themselves; but they all maintained that faith 
alone was sufficient to secure salvation, while the Catholics 
maintained that good works were also necessary. The 
most profligate of men, the most brutal and bloody of 
tyrants, may be a staunch believer ; for the devils them- 
selves believe ; and therefore we naturally, at first thought, 
think it strange that Henry VIII. did not instantly become 
a zealous Protestant, did not become one of the most 
devoted disciples of Luther. He would, certainly ; but 
Luther began his ** Reformation " a few years too soon for 
the King. In 15 17, when Luther began his works, the 
King had been married to his first wife only eight years ; 
and he had not then conceived any project of divorce. If 
Luther had begun twelve years later the King would have 
been a Protestant at once, especially after seeing that this 
new religion allowed Luther and seven other of his brother 
leaders in the " Reformation " to grant, under their hands, 
a licence to the Landgrave of Hesse to have two wives at 
one and the same time ! ^'^ So complaisant a religion 
would have been, and doubtless was, at the time of the 
divorce, precisely to the King's taste ; but, as I have just 
observed, it came twelve years too soon for him ; for, not 
only had he not adopted this religion, but had opposed it 
as a sovereign ; and, which was a still more serious affair, 
had opposed it as an author 1 He had, in 1521, written a 
book against it. His vanity and his pride were engaged 
in the contest ; to which may be added, that Luther, 
in answering his book, had called him *'a pig, an ass, a 



'^ Philip of Hesse, who had been married sixteen years and with his wife 
Btill living, asked Luther to authorise him to marry a second wife. This 
the Reformer permitted " in order to provide for the welfare of his body 
and soul, and to bring greater glory to God." Both Luther and 
Melanchthon would have permitted the same to Henry VHL ^cf. Mrs, 
Hope, The First Divorce of Henry VIII. f^^. 194). 



68 

dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon 
dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth 
and a whorish face;" and had afterwards said to him, 
" you lie, you stupid and sacrilegious king." 

1 02. Therefore, though tlie tyrant was bent on destroy- 
ing the Catholic Church, he was not less bent on the 
extirpation of the followers of Luther and his tribe of new 
sects. Always under the influence of some selfish and 
base motive or other, he was, with regard to the Pro- 
testants, set to work by revenge, as, in the case of the 
CathoHcs, he had been set to work by lust. To follow 
him, step by step, and in minute detail, through all his 
butcheries and all his burnings would be to familiarise 
one's mind to a human slaughter-house and a cookery of 
cannibals. I shall, therefore, confine myself to a general 
view of his Works in this way. 

103. His book against Luther had acquired- him the 
title of " Defender of the Faith," of which we shall see 
more by-and-by. He could not, therefore, without recan- 
tation, be a Protestant ; and, indeed, his pride would not 
suffer him to become the proselyte of a man who had, in 
print too, proclaimed him to be a pig, an ass, a fool, and 
a liar. Yet he could not pretend to be a Catholic. He 
was therefore compelled to make a religion of his own. 
This was doing nothing, unless he enforced its adoption 
by what he called law. Laws were made by him and by 
his servile and plundering parliament, condemning to the 
flames as heretics all who did not expressly conform, by 
acts as well as by declarations, to the faith and worship 
which, as head of the Church, he invented and ordained. 
Amongst his tenets there were such as neither Catholics 
nor Protestants could, consistently with their creeds, 
adopt. He therefore sent both to the stake, and some- 
times, in order to add mental pangs to those of the body, 
he dragged them to the fire on the same hurdle, tied 
together in pairs, back to back, each pair containing a 



69 

Catholic and a Protestant." Was this the way that Saint 
Austin and Saint Patrick propagated their religion ? Yet, 
such is the malignity of Burnet, and of many, many others, 
called Protestant " divines," that they apologize for, if 
they do not absolutely applaud, this execrable tyrant, at 
the very moment that they are compelled to confess that 
he soaked the earth with Protestant blood and filled the 
air with the fumes of their roasting flesh. 

104. Throughout the whole of this bloody work, Cranmer, 
who was the primate of the King's religion, was consenting 
to, sanctioning, and aiding and abetting in, the murdering 
of Protestants as well as Catholics ; though, and I pray 
you mark it well, Hume, Tillotson, Burnet, and all his 
long lists of eulogists, say, and make it matter of merit in 
him, that all this while he was himself a sincere Protes- 
tant in his heart ! ^* And, indeed, we shall, by-and-by 
see him openly avowing those very tenets, for the holding 

'* Sander, {Schism, ed. Lewis, p. 149) says, " On the 30th day of July 
(1540), six persons were put to death, three of whom were Catholics and 
three were heretics. They were carried to the place of execution through 
the streets upon hurdles, two and two together, a Catholic and a heretic 
upon the same hurdle." The Catholics were Thomas Able, Richard 
Fetherston and Edward Powell, priests condemned for their denial of the 
royal supremacy. The three condemned as heretics were also priests, 
named Barnes, Gerard and Jerome. 

Richard Hilles, a " reformer," writing from London about these execu- 
tions, adds : "In the week following the burning of these preachers were 
executed many Others . . . It is now no novelty among us to see men 
slain, hung, quartered, or beheaded : some for trifling expressions which 
were explained or interpreted as having been spoken against the King ; 
others for the Pope's supremacy ; some for one thing and some for 
another." {Original Letters, Parker Society, No. 105.) 

" In 1533, for example, Cranmer condemned of heresy John Frith and 
Andrew Hewet for denying the doctrine of the real presence (see his 
account, Arckceohgia, xviii., 81). Of the three men who brought Lambert 
to the stake in 1538, two, Barnes and Cranmer, certainly professed later 
the very doctrine of their victim, and, both like him subsequently perished 
in the flames. 



70 

of which he had been instrumental in sending, without 
regard to age or sex, others to perish in the flames. The 
progress of this man in the paths of infamy needed incon- 
testable proof to reconcile the human mind to a belief in it. 
Before he became a priest he had married; after he 
became a priest, and had taken the oath of celibacy, he, 
being then in Germany and having become a Protestant, 
married another wife.^^ Being the primate of Henry's 
Church, which still forbade the clergy to have wives, and 
which held them to their oath of celibacy, he had his wife 
brought to England in a chest, with holes bored in it to 
give her air ! As the cargo was destined for Canterbury, 
it was landed at Gravesend, where the sailors, not apprised 
of the contents of the chest, set it up on the end, and the 
wrong end downwards, and had nearly broken the neck of 
the poor frow ! " Here was a pretty scene 1 A German 
wife and children, kept in hugger-mugger on that spot 
which had been the cradle of English Christianity ; that 
spot where St. Austin had inhabited, and where Thomas 
a-Becket had sealed with his blood his opposition to a 

'5 Cranmer, whilst a student at Cambridge, and before he entered into 
Holy Orders, married *' one Joan, . . dwelling at the sign of the 
Dolphin " there. She dying he became a priest ; but during his embassy 
to Germany about the beginning of 1532, he was married to Margaret, the 
niece of Osiander of Nuremberg. This marriage being altogether unlawful, 
according to the law of England, he, as he acknowledged at his trial, " in 
the time of King Henry VHI., kept the said wife secretly, and had 
children of her." {Cranmer's Remains^ Parker Society, p. 219.) 

'« The story as given in the text may be seen in Parsons' The Three 
Conversions of England, H., chap, vii., p. 371 • the author adding, 
" This is a most certain story, and testified at this day by Cranmer's son's 
widow, yet living, to divers gentlemen, her friends, from whom myself 
had it." Harpsfield, The Pretended Divorce (Camden Society, p. 275), and 
Sander, The Anglican Schism (ed. Lewis, p. 181), both speak to the 
Archbishop being obliged to carry about his wife in a chest full of holes. 
Harpsfield says that Edmund Cranmer, the Archbishop's brother, " was 
likewise married, and kept privily his woman," 



71 

tyrant who aimed at the destruction of the Church and 
at the pillage of the people ! . Here is quite enough to fill 
us with disgust : but when we reflect that this same 
primate, while he had under his roof his wife and her 
children, was engaged in assisting to send Protestants to 
the flames because they dissented from a system that 
forbade the clergy to have wives," we swell with indigna- 
tion ; — not against Cranmer, for, though there are so many 
of his atrocious deeds yet to come, he has exhausted our 
store; not against Hume, for he professed no regard for 
any religion at all ; but against those who are called 
" divines," and who are the eulogists of Cranmer ; against 
Burnet, who says that Cranmer " did all with a good 
conscience ; " and against Dr. Sturges, or, rather, the Dean 
and Chapter of Winchester, who clubbed their "talents" 
in getting up the Reflections on Popery^ who talk of the 
** respectable Cranmer," and who have the audacity to 
put him, in point of integrity, upon a level with Sir Thomas 
More ! ^® As Dr. Milner, in his answer to Sturges, observes, 
they resembled each other in that the name of both was 
Thomas ; but, in all other things, the dissimilarity was 
as great as that which the most vivid imagination can 
ascribe to the dissimilarity between hell and heaven. 

105. The infamy of Cranmer in assisting in sending 
people to the flames for entertaining opinions which he 
afterwards confessed that he himself entertained at the 
time he was so sending them, can be surpassed by nothing 
of which human depravity is capable ; and it can be 
equalled by nothing but that of the King, who, while be 
was as he hoped and thought laying the axe to the root 



" Cranmer at his trial admitted that he continued to live with his wife 
although the canons forbade it. When questioned by Henry " whethei 
his bed-chamber would stand the test of the six articles," he declared he 
had sent his wife home to Germany. (Collier, History y ii., p. 200.) 

*• J. Sturges, Reflections on Popery (2nd ed.), p. 145. 



72 

of the Catholic faith, still styled himself its defender ! He 
was not, let it be borne in mind, defender of what he might, 
as others have since his day, and in bis day, called the 
Christian Faith. He received the title from the Pope, as 
a reward for his written defence of the Catholic faith 
against Luther. The Pope conferred on him this title, 
which was to descend to his posterity. The title was 
given by Pope Leo X., in a bull or edict, beginning with 
these words : " Leo, servant of the servants of the Lord, 
to his most dear son, Henry, King of England, Defender 
of the Faith, all health and happiness." The bull then 
goes on to say, that the king having in defence of the faith 
of the Catholic Church written a book against Martin 
Luther, the Pope and his Council had determined to confer 
on him and his successors the title of Defender of the 
Faith. ** We," says the bull, " sitting in this Holy See, 
having with mature deliberation considered the business 
with our brethren, do with their unanimous counsel and 
consent grant unto your Majesty, your heirs and successors, 
the title of Defender of the Faith ; which we do by these 
presents, confirm unto you; commanding all the faithful 
to give your Majesty this title." ^* 

io6. What are we to think, then, of the man who could 
continue to wear this title while he was causing to be 
acted before him a farce in which the Pope and his 
Council were exposed to derision, and was burning and 
ripping up the bowels of people by scores, only because 
they remained firm in that faith of which he had still the 
odious effrontery to call himself the Defender ? All justice, 
everything like law, every moral thought must have been 
banished before such monstrous enormity could have been 



'• The grant was made October ii, 1521. In this title " the king took 
great pleasure ; affecting it always beyond all his other titles." Clement 
VII., the successor of Leo X., on March 5, 1524, "granted the title to 
his successors." (Burnet y ed. Pocock, i., p. 50.) 






73 

suffered to exist. They were all banished from the seat 
of power. An iron despotism had, as we shall see in the 
next number, come to supply the place of the papal supre- 
macy. Civil liberty was wholly gone : no man had any- 
thing that he could call property ; and no one could look 
upon his life as safe for twenty-four hours. 

107. But there is a little more to be said about this title 
of Defender of the Faith, which, for some reason or other 
that one can hardly discover, seems to have been, down 
to our time, a singularly great favourite. Edward VI. ,^ 
though his two " Protectors," who succeeded each other 
in that office, and whose guilty heads we shall gladly see 
succeeding each other on the block, abolished the CathoHc 
faith by law ; though the Protestant faith was, with the 
help of foreign troops, established in its stead ; and though 
the greedy ruffians of his time robbed the very altars, 
under the pretext of extirpating that very faith of which 
his title called him the Defender ; — continued to wear this 
title throughout his reign. Elizabeth continued to wear 
this title during her long reign of "mischief and of misery," 
as Whitaker justly calls it, though during the whole of that 
reign she was busily engaged in persecuting, in ruining, 
in ripping up the bowels of those who entertained that faith 
of which she styled herself the Defender, in which she 
herself had been born, in which she had lived for many 
years, and to which she adhered openly and privately till 
her self-interest called upon her to abandon it. She con- 
tinued to wear this title while she was tearing the bowels 
out of her subjects for hearing mass, while she was refus- 
ing the last comforts of the Catholic religion to her cousin, 
Mary, Queen of Scotland, whom she put to death by a 
mockery of law and justice, after, as Whitaker has fully 
proved, having long, endeavoured in vain to find amongst 
her subjects a man base and bloody enough to take her 
victim oflf by assassination. This title was worn by that 
mean creature, James I., who took as his chief councillor 



74 

the right worthy son of that father who had been the chief 
contriver of the murder of his innocent mother, and whose 
reign was one unbroken series of base plots and cruel 
persecutions of all who professed the Catholic faith. But, 
not to anticipate further matter which will, hereafter, find 
a more suitable place, we may observe that amongst all 
our sovereigns the only real Defenders of the Faith, since 
the reign of Mary, have been King George III. and his 
son ; the former, by assenting to a repeal of a part of the 
penal code, and by his appointing a special commission to 
try, condemn, and execute the leaders of the ferocious mob 
who set fire to, and who wished to sack London, in 1780, 
with the cry of "no popery " in their mouths and from 
pretended zeal for the Protestant religion, and the latter, 
by his sending, in 1814, a body of English troops to assist 
as a guard of honour at the re-instalment of the Pope. 
Let us hope that his defence of the faith is not to stop 
here ; but that unto him is reserved the real glory of 
being the Defender of the Faith of all his subjects, and of 
heahng for ever those deep and festering wounds which, 
for more than two centuries, have been inflicted on so 
large and so loyal a part of his people. 

108. From the sectarian host no man can say what 
ought to be expected ; but from the '' divines " of the 
established Church, even supposing them dead to the 
voice of justice, one would think that, when they reflect 
on the origin of this title of their sovereign, common 
decency would restrain their revihngs. It is beyond aU 
dispute that the King holds this title from the Pope, and 
from nobody else. His divine right to the crown is daily 
disputed, and he himself has disclaimed it. But as to 
Defender of the Faith, he owes it entirely to the Pope. 
Will, then, the Protestant divines boldly tell us that their 
and our sovereign wears a title which, observe, finds its 
way not only into every treaty, but into every municipal 
act, deed, or covenant ; will they tell us that he holds this 






75 

title from the " Man of Sin, Antichrist, and the scarlet 
whore " ? Will they thus defame that sovereign, whom 
they, at the same time, call on us to honour and obey ? 
Yet this they must do, or they must confess that their 
revilings, their foul abuse of the Catholic Church, have all 
been detestably false. 

109. The King's predecessors had another title. They 
were called Kings of France ; a title of much longer 
standing than that of Defender of the Faith. That title, 
a title of great glory, and one of which we were very 
proud, was not won by ** Gospellers " or Presbyterians. 
It was, along with the Three Feathers, which the King so 
long wore, won by our brave Catholic ancestors. It was 
won while the Pope's supremacy, while confessions to 
priests, while absolutions, indulgences, masses, and monas- 
teries existed in England. It was won by Catholics in 
" the dark ages of monkish ignorance and superstition." 
It was surrendered in an age enlightened by " a heaven- 
born " Protestant and pledge-breaking minister. It was 
won by valour and surrendered by fear. 

no. It would be time now, after giving a rapid sketch 
of the progress which the tyrant had made in prostrating 
the liberties of his people, and in despatching more of his 
wives, to enter on the grand scene of plunder, and to 
recount the miseries which immediately followed ; but 
these must be the subject of the next chapter. 



76 



CHAPTER IV. 

111. We have seen, then, how the "Reformation," was 
brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and we have had 
some specimens of the acts by which it caused innocent 
blood to be shed. We shall now in this chapter and the 
next see how it devastated and plundered the country, 
what poverty and misery it produced, and how it laid 
the sure foundation for that pauperism, that disgraceful 
immorality, that fearful prevalence of crimes of all sorts, 
which now so strongly mark the character of this nation 
which was formerly the land of virtue and of plenty. 

112. When, in paragraph 97, we left the King and 
Cranmer at their bloody work, we had come to the year 
1536, and to the 27th year of the King's reign. In the 
year 1528 an act had been passed to exempt the King 
from paying any sum of money that he might have 
borrowed ; another act followed this for a similar purpose, 
and thus thousands of persons were ruined. His new 
Queen, Jane Seymour, brought him, in 1537, a son, who 
was afterwards king, under the title of Edward VI. ; but 
the mother died in childbirth and, according to Sir 
Richard Baker, ** had her body ripped up to preserve the 
child " P In this great " Reformation " man all was of a 



' Edward VI. was born October 12, 1537, and Jane Seymour died two 
days after. Burnet (ed. Pocock, iv., p. 572) declares that the report as to 
her death *' is false." Heylin {History of Reformation, p. 7) speaks to the 
general belief that a surgical operation took place which resulted in the 
Queen's death. Harpsfield, to the general accuracy of whose work. The 



I 



77 

piece, all was consistent ; he seemed never to have any 
compassion for the sufferings of any human being; and 
this is a characteristic which Whitaker gives to his 
daughter Elizabeth, 

113. Having a son for a successor, he with his Parlia- 
ment enacted in 1537 that Mary and Elizabeth, his two 
daughters, were illegitimate, and that in case of a want of 
lawful issue the king should be enabled, by letters patent 
or by his last will, to give the crown to whomsoever he 
pleased P To cap the whole, to complete a series of acts 
of tyranny such as were never before heard of, it was 
enacted in 1537, and in the 28th year of his reign, that 
except in cases of mere private right '' the King's proclama- 
tion should be of the same force as Acts of Parliament "I* 



Pretended Divorce^ Mr. Pocock bears testimony, states it as a fact ; and in 
this Sander {Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism^ ed. Lewis, p. 138) 
corroborates the account, as also does the contemporary Spanish Chronicle 
(ed. M. A. Sharp Hume), p. 73, and the account of Fisher and More 
printed by Pocock {Records^ ii., 564). As Lingard has shown {History, vi., 
3rd ed., p. 389), Henry's grief at Jane Seymour's death, if he felt any, war, 
absorbed in his pleasure at the birth of a son. The very next month 
he proposed himself as a husband for Marie, the duchess dowager of 
Longueville. 

' Lingard, History of England {6ih ed.), vi., p. 371, says: " The suc- 
cession to the crown was repeatedly altered, and at length left to the 
King's private judgment or affection. The right was first taken from Mary 
and given to Elizabeth ; then transferred from Elizabeth to the King's 
issue by Jane Seymour or any future Queen ; next restored, on the 
failure of issue by Prince Edward, to both Mary and Elizabeth ; and 
lastly, failing issue by them, secured to any person or persons to whom it 
should please him to assure it in remainder by his last will.'* (25 Hen. 
VHL, 22.) 

* ' ' The King was made in a great measure independent of Parliament 
by two statutes, one of which gave to his proclamations the force of laws, 
the other appointed a tribunal, consisting of nine privy councillors, with 
power to punish all transgressors of such proclamations." (31 Hen. 
VHL, 8, and 34 Hen. VI H., 23.) The reason assigned by the Parlia- 
ment for passing those Acts was '*that the King might not be driven tc 
extend his royal supremacy." (Lingard, ut supra,) 



78 

Thus, then, all law and justice were laid prostrate at the 
feet of a single man, and that man a man with whom law 
was a mockery, on whom the name of justice was a libel, 
and to whom mercy was wholly unknown. 

114. It is easy to imagine that no man's property or life 
could have security with power like this in the hands of 
such a man. Magna Charta had been trampled under 
foot from the moment that the Pope's supremacy was 
assailed. The famous act of Edward the Third, for the 
security of the people against unfounded charges of high 
treason, was wholly set aside. Numerous things were 
made high treason which were never before thought 
criminal at all.* The trials were for a long while a mere 
mockery, and at last they were altogether, in many cases, 
laid aside and the accused were condemned to death, not 
only without being arraigned and heard in their defence, 
but in numerous cases without being apprised of the 
crimes or pretended crimes for which they were executed." 
We have read of Deys of Algiers and Beys of Tunis, but 
never have heard of them, even in the most exaggerated 
accounts, any deeds to be, in point of injustice and cruelty, 
compared with those of this man, whom Burnet calls ** the 
first-born son of the English Reformation." The objects 
of his cruelty generally were, as they most naturally would 
be, chosen from amongst the most virtuous of his subjects, 
because from them such a man had the most to dread. Of 
these his axe hewed down whole families and circles of 
friends. He spared neither sex nor age if the parties 
possessed, or were suspected of possessing, that integrity 
which made them disapprove of his deeds. To look awry 
excited his suspicion, and his suspicion was death. Eng. 



* Cj. Lingard, ibid., p. 371. 

• Ibid., p. 374. "The unfortunate prisoner found himself condemned 
to the scaffold or the gallows, without the opportunity of opening his mouth 
in his own vindication." 



I 



79 

land, before his reign so happy, so free, knowing so little 
of crime as to present to the judges of assize scarcely three 
criminals in a county in a year, now saw upwards of sixty 
thousand persons shut up in her jails at one and the same 
time. The purlieus of the court of this '' first-born son of 
the Reformation" were a great human slaughter-house; 
his people, deserted by their natural leaders, who had been 
bribed by plunder or the hope of plunder, were the terrified 
and trembling flock ; vv^hile he, the master-butcher, fat and 
jocose, sat in his palace issuing orders for the slaughter, 
while his high priest, Cranmer, stood ready to sanction 
and to sanctify all his deeds. 

115. A detail of these butcheries could only disgust and 
weary the reader. One instance, however, must not be 
omitted ; namely, the slaughtering of the relations and 
particularly the mother of Cardinal Pole. The Cardinal, 
who had, when very young and before the King's first 
divorce had been agitated, been a great favourite with the 
King, and had pursued his studies and travels on the Con- 
tinent at the King's expense, disapproved of the divorce 
and of all the acts that followed it ; and though called 
home by the King he refused to obey. He was a man of 
great learning, talent and virtue, and his opinions had 
great weight in England. His mother, the Countess of 
Salisbury, was descended from the Plantagenets, and was 
the last living descendant of that long race of English 
kings. Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was the daughter 
of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of King Edward IV. 
So that the Cardinal, who had been by the Pope raised to 
that dignity on account of his great learning and eminent 
virtues, was thus a relation of the King, as his mother was 
of course, and she was, too, the nearest of all his relations. 
But the Cardinal was opposed to the King's proceedings ; 
and that was enough to excite and put in motion the 
deadly vengeance of the latter. Many were the arts that 
he made use of, and great in amount was the treasure of 
his people that he expended, in order to bring the Cardinal's 



8o 



1 



person within his grasp ; • and these having failed, he 
resolved to wreak his ruthless vengeance on his kindred 
and his aged mother. She was charged by the base 
Thomas Cromwell (of whom we shall soon see enough) 
with having persuaded her tenants not to read the new 
translations of the Bible, and also with having received 
bulls from Rome,' which the accuser said were found at 
Cowdray House, her seat in Sussex. Cromwell also 
showed a banner which had, he said, been used by certain 
rebels in the north, and which he said he found in her 
house. All this was, however, so very barefaced that it 
was impossible to think of a trial. The judges were then 
asked whether the Parliament could not attaint her ; that 
is to say, condemn her without giving her a hearing. The 
judges said that it was a dangerous matter ; that they 
could not in their courts act in this manner,® and that they 

• Cardinal Pole writing to Cromwell, May 2, 1537, says that Henry had 
asked the king of France to deliver him up into his hands when he had 
come to the French Court as Legate. *' Betray thine ambassador, betray 
the Legate, and give him to my ambassador's hands to be brought unto me ! 
This was the dishonourable request, as I understand, of the King." Burnet 
(ed. Pocock), vi., p. 186. 

' Lord Herbert saw in the records that Bulls from the Pope were found 
in her house, that she kept correspondence with her son, and that she for- 
bade her tenants to have the New Testament in English, or any other of 
the books that had been published by the King's authority {cf. in Burnet^ 
L, p. 565). She was attainted in 1539, and kept in prison till May 27, 
1541, when she was executed. 

* Burnet (ed. Pocock, i., p. 564) says: "After these executions («.<?., 
those of the Marquis of Exeter and Sir Nicholas Carew) followed the Par- 
liament in the year 1539; in which not only those attainders that were 
already passed were confirmed, but new ones of a strange and unheard-of 
nature were enacted. It is a blemish never to be washed off and which 
cannot be enough condemned, and was a breach of the most sacred and 
unalterable rules of justice, which is capable of no excuse ; it was the at- 
tainting of some persons whom they held in custody without bringing them 
to trial." Hallam, in his Const ittitional History (loth ed.), i., p. 39, says, 
** These parliamentary attainders . . . were violations of reason and justice in 
the application of the law. But many general enactments of this reign 
bear the same character of servility." 



8i 

thought the Parliament never would. But being asked 
whether, if the Parliament were to do it, it would remain 
good in law, they answered in the affirmative. That was 
enough. A bill was brought in, and thus was the Countess, 
together with the Marchioness of Exeter and two gentle- 
men,® relations of the Cardinal, condemned to death. The 
two latter were executed, the Marchioness was pardoned, 
and the Countess shut up in prison as a sort of hostage 
for the conduct of her son. In a few months, however, an 
insurrection having broken out on account of his tyrannical 
acts, the King chose to suspect that the rebels had been 
instigated by Cardinal Pole, and forth he dragged his 
mother to the scaffold. She, who was upwards of seventy 
years of age, though worn down in body by her imprison- 
ment, maintained to the last a true sense of her character 
and noble descent. When bidden to lay her head upon 
the block : " No," answered she, " my head shall never 
bow to tyranny : it never committed treason ; and if you 
will have it, you must get it as you can." The executioner 
struck at her neck with his axe, and as she ran about the 
scaffold with her gray locks hanging down her shoulders 
and breast, he pursued, giving her repeated chops, till at 
last he brought her down ! *" 

1 1 6. Is it a scene in Turkey or in Tripoli that we are con- 
templating ? No ; but in England, where Magna Charta 
had been so lately in force, where nothing could have been 



• Lingard, Historyy vi., p. 289, "In the bill of attainder, containing the 
names of several individuals who had been condemned in the lower courts, 
were introduced those of Pole's mother, the Countess, of his nephew, the 
son of Lord Montague, and of Gertrude, relict of the Marquess of Exeter, 
though none of them had confessed any crime, nor been heard in their own 
defence." Stowe, p. 581, says, " Being never arraigned nor tried before, 
but condemned by Act of Parliament." 

»* The Countess of Salisbury's execution was upon May 27, 1541. The 
account given in the text is taken from Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIIL^ 
p. 532. 

6 



82 

done contrary to law; but where all power ecclesiastical 
as well as lay being placed in the hands of one man, 
bloody butcheries like this, which would have roused even 
a Turkish populace to resistance, could be perpetrated 
without th6 smallest danger to the perpetrator. Hume, 
in his remarks upon the state of the people in this reign, 
pretends that the people never hated the King, and *' that 
he seems even in some degree to have possessed to the 
last their love and affection." ^^ He adds that it may be 
said with truth that the "English in that age were so 
thoroughly subdued that, like Eastern slaves, they were 
inclined to admire even those acts of violence and tyranny 
which were exercised over themselves and at their own 
expense." ^2 This unreliable historian everywhere en- 
deavours to gloss over the deeds of those who destroyed 
the Catholic Church both in England and Scotland. Too 
cunning, however, to applaud Henry himself, he would 
have us believe that, after all, there was something amiable 
in him, and this belief he would have us found on the fact 
of his having been to the last seemingly beloved by his 
people. 

117. Nothing can be more false than this assertion, if 
repeated insurrections against him, accompanied with the 
most bitter complaints and reproaches, be not to be taken 
as marks of popular affection. And as to the remark that 
the English '' in that age were so thoroughly subdued," 
while it seems to refute the assertion as to their affection 
for the tyrant, it is a slander which the envious Scotch 
writers all delight to put forth and repeat.^^ One object 

" This estimate Hume gives from Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (ed. 
1822), i., p. 601. 

" Hume, History of England {Mwvrdiy^s reprint), ii., p. 226. 

" The verdict of modern Scotch writers is not too favourable to He^ry 
Vni. Mr. J. Bain, the able editor of The Hamilion Papers, writes: "We 
are not concerned here to discuss it {i.e, the character of Henry) in relation 
to his dealings with Europe or his own people; but it will, we thiric. 



I 



I 



83 

always uppermost with Hume is to malign the Catholic 
religion : it therefore did not occur to him that this san- 
guinary tyrant was not effectually resisted, as King John 
and other bad kings had been, because this tyrant had the 
means of bribing the natural leaders of the people to take 
part against them, or, at the least, to neutralise those 
leaders. It did not occur to him to tell us that Henry 
Vni. found the English as gallant and just a people as his 
ancestors had found them, but that having divided them 
by holding out to the great an enormous mass of plunder 
as a reward for abandoning the rights of the people, 
the people became, as every people without leaders must 
become, a mere flock or herd to be dealt with at pleasure. 
The malignity and envy of this Scotchman blinded 
him to this view of the matter, and induced him to ascribe 
to the people's admiration of tyranny that submission 
which, after repeated struggles, they yielded merely 
from the want of those leaders of whom they were now for 
the first time wholly deprived. What ? have we never 
known any country consisting of several millions of people, 
oppressed and insulted, even for ages, by a mere handful 
of men ? And are we to conclude that such a country 
submits from admiration of the tyranny under which they 
groan ? Did the English submit to Cromwell from ad- 
miration ; and was it from admiration that the French 
submitted to Robespierre ? The latter was punished, but 
Cromwell was not, — he, like Henry, died in his bed ; but to 
what mind, except to that of the most malignant and 
perverse, would it occur that Cromwell's impunity arose 

appear to those who study the following papers that his policy towards 
Scotland, whether in peace or war, was, when not treacherous and under- 
hand, much too dictatorial to be tamely endured by an independent nation. 
Duri»g peace, while professing his love for his nephew, he fomented 
rebellion among the Scottish borderers against their king, tampered with 
his nobles and maintained a system of espionage in his country." {^Hamil. 
ton Papers, i., Introduction, xiii.) 



84 

from the willing submission and the admiration of the 

people ? 

1 1 8. Of the means by which the natural leaders of the 
people were seduced from them, of the kind and the 
amount of the prize of plunder, we are now going to 
take a view. In paragraph 4 I have said that the '* Re- 
formation " was cherished and fed by plunder and devas- 
tation. In paragraph 37 I have said that it was not a 
reformation but a devastation of England, and that this 
devastation impoverished and degraded the main body 
of the people. These statements I am now about to prove 
to be true. 

119. In paragraphs from 55 to 60 inclusive, we have 
seen how monasteries arose and what sort of institutions 
they were. There were in England at the time we are 
speaking of 645 of these institutions, besides 90 colleges, 
no hospitals, and 2,374 chantries ^^^ ^^^^ chapels. The 
whole were seized on, first and last, taken into the hands 
of the King, and by him granted to those who aided and 
abetted him in the work of plunder." 

120. I pray you, my friends, sensible and just English- 
men, to observe here that this was a great mass of landed 
property, that this property was not by any means used for 
the sole benefit of monks, friars and nuns, that for the 
far greater part its rents flowed immediately back amongst 
the people at large, and that if it had never been an object 
of plunder England never would, and never could, have 
heard the hideous sound of the words pauper and poor- 
rate. You have seen in paragraph 52 in what manner the 
tithes arose and how they were disposed of, and you are, 
by-and-by, to see how the rents of the monasteries were 
distributed. 

'* For a rough calculation of the money value of the monastic houses and 
their effects, taken from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Court of Aug- 
mentation, see Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English MonasterUs, 
"•. PP- 534-5- 



85 

121. You have, without doubt, fresh in your recollection 
all the censures, sarcasms, and ridicule which we have 
from our very infancy heard against the monastic life. 
What drones the monks and friars and nuns were, how 
uselessly they lived, how much they consumed to no good 
purpose whatever, and particularly how ridiculous and 
even how wicked it was to compel men and women to live 
unmarried, to lead a life of celibacy, and thus either to 
deprive them of a great natural pleasure, or to expose 
them to the double sin of breach of chastity and breach 
of oath. 

122. Now this is a very important matter. It is a great 
moral question, and therefore we ought to endeavour to 
settle this question ; to make up our minds completely 
upon it before we proceed any further. The monastic 
state necessarily was accompanied with vows of celibacy ; 
and therefore it is, before we give an account of the 
putting down of these institutions in England, necessary 
to speak of the tendency and, indeed, of the natural and 
inevitable consequences of those vows. 

123. It has been represented as " unnatural" to compel 
men and women to live in the unmarried state, and as tend- 
ing to produce propensities to which it is hardly proper 
even to allude. In the first place, the Catholic Church 
compels nobody to make such vow. It only says that it 
will admit no one to be a priest, monk, friar, or nun, who 
rejects such vow. Saint Paul strongly recommends to 
all Christian teachers an unmarried life. The Church has 
founded a rule on this recommendation, and that, too, for 
the same reason that the recommendation was given ; 
namely, that those who have flocks to watch over, or, in 
the language of our own Protestant Church, who have 
the care of souls, should have as few as possible of other 
cares, and should by all means be free from those inces- 
sant and sometimes racking cares which are inseparable 
from a wife and family. What priest who has a wife and 



86 

family will not think more about them than about hig 
flock ? Will he, when any part of that family is in dis- 
tress from illness or other cause, be wholly devoted, body 
and mind, to his flock ? Will he be as ready to give alms 
or aid of any sort to the poor as he would be if he had no 
family to provide for ? Will he never be tempted to swerve 
from his duty in order to provide patronage for sons 
and for the husbands of daughters ? Will he always as 
boldly stand up and reprove the lord or the squire for their 
oppressions and vices as he would do if he had no son for 
whom to get a benefice, a commission, or a sinecure ? Will 
his wife never have her partialities, her tattlings, her bicker- 
ings, amongst his flock, and never on any account induce 
him to act towards any part of that flock contrary to the 
strict dictates of his sacred duty ? And to omit hundreds 
— yes, hundreds — of reasons that might in addition be sug- 
gested, will the married priest be as ready as the unmarried 
one to appear at the bedside of sickness and contagion ? 
Here it is that the calls on him are most imperative, and 
here it is that the married priest will — and with nature on 
his side — be deaf to those calls. From amongst many 
instances that I could cite, let me take one. During the 
war of 1776, the king's house at Winchester was used as 
a prison for French prisoners of war. A dreadfully con- 
tagious fever broke out amongst them. Many of them died. 
They were chiefly Catholics, and were attended in their 
last moments by two or three Catholic priests residing in 
that city ; but amongst the sick prisoners there were many 
Protestants, and these requested the attendance of Pro- 
testant parsons. There were the parsons of all the 
parishes at Winchester. There were the dean and all 
the prebendaries ; but not a man of them went to console 
the dying Protestants, in consequence of which several of 
them desired the assistance of the priests and, of course, 
died Catholics. Doctor Milner, in his letters to Doctor 
Sturges, mentions this matter, and he says, *' the answer 



I 



87 

(of the Protestant parsons) I understand to have been 
this : — ' We are not more afraid, as individuals, to face 
death than the priests are ; but we must not carry poison- 
ous contagion into the bosoms of our famiUes.' " ^^ No ; 
to be sure ! But then — not to call this the cassock's taking 
shelter behind the petticoat — in what a dilemma does this 
place the dean and chapter ! Either they neglected their 
most sacred duty, and left Protestants to flee in their 
last moments into the arms of " popery"; or that clerical 
celibacy, against which they have declaimed all their 
lives and still declaim, and still hold up to us, their flocks, 
as something both contemptible and wicked, is, after all, 
necessary to that " care of souls " to which they profess 
themselves to have been "called" and for which they 
receive such munificent reward. 

124. But conclusive, perfectly satisfactory, as these 
reasons are, we should not, if we were to stop here, do 
anything like justice to our subject ; for as to the 
parochial clergy, do we not see — aye, and feel too — that 
they, if with famihes or intending to have families, find 
little to spare to the poor of their flocks ? In short, do 
we not know that a married priesthood and pauperism 
and poor-rates all came upon this country at one and the 
same moment ? And what was the eflect of clerical 
celibacy with regard to the higher orders of the clergy ? 
A bishop, for instance, having neither wife nor child, 
naturally expended his revenues amongst the people in his 
diocese. He expended a part of them on his cathedral 
church, or in some other way sent his revenues back to 
the people. If WiUiam of Wykham^^ had been a married 
man, the parsons would not now have had a college at 
Winchester ; nor would there have been a college either at 
Eton, Westminster, Oxford, or Cambridge, if the bishops 

'* Milner, Letters to a Prebendary^ p. 56. 

"William of Wykham was Bishop of Winchester from 1367 to 1398. 



88 

in those days had been married men. Besides, who is to 
expect of human nature that a bishop with a wife and 
family will, in his distribution of church preferment, 
consider nothing but the interest of religion ? We are not 
to expect of man more than that of which we, from ex- 
perience, know that man is capable. It is for the law- 
giver to interpose, and to take care that the community 
suffer not from the frailty of the nature of individuals, 
whose private virtues even may, in some cases, and those 
not a few, not have a tendency to produce public good. 
I do not say that married bishops ever do wrong, because 
I am not acquainted with them well enough to ascertain 
the fact ; but, in speaking of the diocese in which I was 
born, and with which I am best acquainted, I may say 
that it is certain that if the late bishop of Winchester^' 
had lived in Catholic times, he could not have had a wife, 
and that he could not have had a wife's sister to marry 
Mr. Edmund Poulter, in which case I may be allowed to 
think it possible that Mr. Poulter would not have quitted 
the bar for the pulpit, and that he would not have had the 
two livings of Meon-Stoke and Soberton, and a prebend 
besides ; that his son, Brownlow Poulter, would not have 
had the two livings of Buriton and Petersfield ; that his 
son, Charles Poulter, would not have had the three livings 
of Alton, Binstead, and Kingsley ; that his son-in-law 
Ogle would not have had the living of Bishop's Waltham ; 
and that his son-in-law Haygarth would not have had the 
two livings of Upham and DurJey. If the bishop had 
lived in Catholic times, he could not have had a son, 
Charles Augustus North, to have the two livings of Alver- 
stoke and Havant, and to be a prebend ; that he could 
not have had another son, Francis North, to have the four 



"Bishop Brownlow North was translated in 1781 from the See of 
Coventry and Lichfield, which he had held for ten years, to Winchester. 
He died in 1820. 



I 



89 

livings of Old Alresford, Medstead, New Alresford, and 
St. Mary's, Southampton, and to be, moreover, a prebend 
and Master of Saint Cross ; that he could not have had a 
daughter to marry Mr. William Garnier, to have the two 
livings of Droxford and Brightwell Baldwin, and to be a 
prebend and a chancellor besides ; that he could not have 
had Mr. William Garnier's brother, Thomas Garnier, for a 
relation, and this latter might not then have had the two 
livings of Aldingbourne and Bishop's Stoke ; that he could 
not have had another daughter to marry Mr. Thomas de 
Grey, to have the four livings of Calbourne, Fawley, Mer- 
ton, and Rounton, and to be a prebend and also an arch- 
deacon besides ! In short, if the late bishop had lived in 
Catholic times, it is a little too much to believe that these 
twenty-four livings, five prebends, one chancellorship, 
one archdeaconship, and one mastership, worth, perhaps, 
all together, more than twenty thousand pounds a year, 
would have fallen to the ten persons above nanjed. And 
may we not reasonably suppose that the bishop, instead 
of leaving behind him (as the newspapers told us he did) 
savings to nearly the amount of three hundred tiiousand 
pounds in money, would, if he had had no children nor 
grandchildren, have expended a part of this money on that 
ancient and magnificent cathedral, the roof of which has 
recently been in danger of falling in ; or would have been 
the founder of something for the public good and national 
honour ; or would have been a most munificent friend and 
protector of the poor, and would never, at any rate, have 
suffered small beer to be sold out of his episcopal palace 
at Farnham ? With an excise licence, mind you ? I do 
not say or insinuate that there was any smuggling carried 
on at the palace. Nor do I pretend to censure the act. 
A man who has a large family to provide for must be 
allowed to be the best judge of his means ; and if he 
happen to have an overstock of small beer, it is natural 
enough for him to sell it in order to get money to buy 



90 

meat, bread, groceries, or other necessaries. What I say 
is, that I do not think that William of Wykham ever sold 
small beer, either by wholesale .or retail ; and I most dis- 
tinctly assert that this was done during the late bishop's 
life-time, from his episcopal palace of Farnham 1 William 
of Wykham (who took his surname from a little village in 
Hampshire) was not bishop of Winchester nearly so long 
as the late bishop ; but out of his revenues he built and 
endowed one of the colleges at Oxford, the College of 
Winchester, and did numerous other most munificent 
things, in some of which, however, he was not without 
examples in his predecessors nor without imitators in his 
successors as long as the Catholic Church remained ; but 
when a married clergy came, then ended all that was 
munificent in the bishops of this once famous city. 

125. It is impossible to talk of the small beer and of the 
Master of Saint Cross, without thinking of the melancholy 
change which the '* Reformation " has produced in this 
ancient establishment. Saint Cross, or Holy Cross, situated 
in a meadow about half a mile from Winchester, is a 
hospital, or place for hospitality, founded and endowed 
by a bishop of Winchester about seven hundred years 
ago. Succeeding bishops added to its endowment, till 
at last it provided a residence and suitable maintenance 
for forty-eight decayed gentlemen, with priests, nurses, 
and other servants and attendants ; and, besides this, it 
made provision for a dinner every day for a hundred of 
the most indigent men in the city. These met daily in 
a hall called the " hundred men's hall." Each had a 
loaf of bread, three quarts of small beer, and " two messes," 
for his dinner ; and they were allowed to carry home that 
which they did not consume upon the spot. What is seen 
at the hospital of Holy Cross now ?^® Alas I ten poor 

•* Though the present state of the hospital is very different from the in- 
tentions of its Catholic founders, much has been done of late years to 
repair the breach of trust which was so long a scandal. 



91 

creatures creeping about in this noble building, and three 
out-pensioners ; and to those an attorney from Winchester 
carries or. sends, weekly, the few pence, whatever they 
may be, that are allowed them ! But the place of the 
" Master " is, as I have heard, worth a round sum annually. 
I do not know exactly what it is ; but, the post being a 
thing given to a son of the bishop, the reader will easily 
imagine that it is not a trifle. There exists, however, here 
that which, as Dr. Milner observes, is probably the last 
remaining vestige of "old English hospitality"; for here 
any traveller who goes and knocks at the gate and asks 
for relief receives gratis a pint of good beer and a hunch 
of good bread. 

126. But (and I had really nearly forgotten it) there is a 
bishop of Winchester now ! ^ And what is he doing ? 
I have not heard that he has founded, or is about to found, 
any colleges or hospitals. All that I have heard of him in 
the education way is that in his first charge to his clergy 
(which he published) he urged them to circulate amongst 
their flocks the pamphlets of a Society in London, and all 
I have heard of him in the charity way, is that he is Vice- 
Patron of a self-created body called the *' fiampshire 
Friendly Society," the object of which is to raise the 
subscriptions amongst the poor, for "their mutual relief 
and maintenance " ; or in other words, to induce the poor 
labourers to save out of their earnings the means of sup- 
porting themselves in sickness or in old age, without 
coming for relief to the poor rates ! Good God ! Why, 
William of Wykham, Bishop Fox, Bishop Waynfleet, 
Cardinal Beaufort, Henry de Blois, and if you take in all 
the bishops of Winchester, even back to Saint Swithun 
himself ; never would they have thought of a scheme like 
this for relieving the poor ! Their way of promoting 



'" Bishop George Pretyman held the See of Winchester from 1820 to 
1827. 



92 

learning was to found and endow colleges and schools ; 
their way of teaching religion was to build and endow 
churches and chapels ; their way of relieving the poor and 
the ailing was to found and endow hospitals ; and all these 
at their own expense ; — out of their own revenues. Never 
did one of them, in order to obtain an interpretation of 
** Evangelical truth " for their flocks, dream of referring 
his clergy to a society. Never did there come into the 
head of any one of them a thought so bright as that of 
causing the necessitous to relieve themselves ! Ah ! but 
they alas ! lived in the ** dark ages of monkish ignorance 
and superstition." No wonder that they could not see 
that the poor were the fittest persons in the world to 
relieve the poor. And besides, they had no wives and 
children ! No sweet babes to smile on to soften their 
hearts. If they had, their conjugal and paternal feelings 
would have taught them that true charity begins at home ; 
and that it teaches men to sell small beer and not give 
it away. 

127. Enough now about the celibacy of the clergy ; but 
it is impossible to quit the subject without one word to 
Parson Malthus. This man is not only a Protestant, 
but a parson of our Church. Now, he wants to compel 
the labouring classes to refrain to a great extent from 
marriage ; and Mr. Scarlett actually brought a bill into 
ParHament, having in one part of it this object avowedly 
in view ; the great end proposed by both being to cause 
a diminution of the poor-rates. Parson Malthus does not 
call this recommending celibacy, but " moral restraint." 
And what is celibacy but moral restraint ? So that here 
are these people reviHng the Catholic Church for insisting 
on vows of celibacy on the part of those who choose to 
be priests or nuns, and at the same time proposing to 
compel the labouring classes to live in a state of celibacy 
or to run the manifest risk of perishing (they and their 
children) from starvation! Is all this sheer impudence, 






93 

or is it sheer folly ? One or the other it is, greater than 
ever was before heard from the lips of mortal man. They 
affect to believe that the clerical vow of celibacy must be 
nugatory. Like all the other wild schemes and cruel 
projects relative to the poor, we trace this at once back 
to the " Reformation," that great source of the poverty 
and misery and degradation of the main body of the people 
of this kingdom.^ The " Reformation " despoiled the 
working classes of their patrimony ; it tore from them 
that which nature and reason had assigned them ; it 
robbed them of that relief for the necessitous which was 
theirs by right imprescriptible, and which had been con- 
firmed to them by the law of God and the law of the land. 
It brought a compulsory, a grudging, an unnatural mode 
of relief, calculated to make the poor and rich hate each 
other instead of binding them together as the Catholic 
mode did, by the bonds of Christian charity. But of all 
its consequences, that of introducing a married clergy 
has perhaps been the most prolific in mischief. This 

* The effect of the dissolution of the Religious Houses in London is 
thus described by Dr. Sharpe (^London and the Kingdojn^ i., p. 404), 
" The sudden closing of these institutions caused the streets to be thronged 
with the sick and poor, and the small parish churches to be so crowded 
with those who had been accustomed to frequent the larger and more com- 
modious churches of the friars that there was scarce room left for the 
parishioners themselves. The city authorities saw at once that something 
would have to be done, if they wished to keep their streets clear of beggars 
and of invalids and not invite the spread of sickness by allowing infected 
persons to wander at large. As a means of affording temporary relief, 
collections for the poor were made every Sunday at Paul's Cross, after the 
sermon, and the proceeds were distributed weekly among the most neces- 
sitous." After petitioning the king in vain to grant the city some of the 
dissolved houses and their revenues, in order that provision might be made 
for the sick and needy, the authorities resolved in 1540 to make an offer 
to purchase some of them for 1000 marks, ** yf thei can be gotten no better 
chepe." Henry only upbraided them for being *' pynch pence " or stingy 
in their offer, and so nothing was done in the matter for four years 
(p. 406.). 



94 

has absolutely created an order for the procreation of 
dependants on the state ; for the bringing into the world 
thousands of persons annually who have no fortunes of 
their own, and who must be, somehow or other, main- 
tained by burdens imposed upon the people. Places, 
commissions, sinecures, pensions; something or other 
must be found for them, some sort of living out of the 
fruit of the rents of the rich and the wages of labour. If 
no excuse can be found, no pretence of public service, no 
corner of the pension list open, then they must come as 
a direct burden upon the people ; and thus it is that we 
have, within the last twenty years, seen sixteen hundred 
thousand pounds voted by the parliament out of the 
taxes, for the " relief of the poor clergy of the Church of 
England;" and at the very time that this premium on 
the procreation of idlers was annually being granted, 
parliament was pestered with projects for compelling 
the working part of the community to lead a life of 
celibacy ! What that is evil, what that is monstrous, has 
not grown out of this Protestant *' Reformation " ! 

128. Thus then, my friends, we have, I think, settled 
this great question ; and after all that we have, during our 
whole lives, heard against that rule of the Catholic Church 
which imposed a vow of celibacy on those who chose the 
clerical or monastic life, we find, whether we look at this 
rule in a religious, in a moral, in a civil, or in a political 
point of view, that it was founded in wisdom, that it was a 
great blessing to the people at large, and that its abolition 
is a thing to be deeply deplored. 

129. So much then, for this topic of everlasting railing 
against the Catholic Church. We must, before we come 
to an account of the deeds of the ruffian, Thomas Cromwell, 
who conducted the work of plunder, say something in 
answer to the general charge which Protestant writers 
have preferred against the monasteries ; for, if what they 
say were true, we might be disposed to think (as indeed we 



I 



95 

have been taught to think), that there was not so much 
harm in the plunderings that we are about to witness. We 
will take this general charge from the pen of Hume, who, 
speaking of the reports made by Thomas Cromwell and his 
myrmidons, says, '* It is safest to credit the existence of 
vices naturally connected with the very institution of the 
monastic life. The cruel and inveterate factions and 
quarrels ^^ therefore, which the commissioners mentioned, 
are very credible among men who, being confined together 
within the same walls, can never forget their mutual 
animosities, and who, being cut off from all the most en- 
dearing connections of nature, are commonly cursed with 
hearts more selfish and tempers more unrelenting than 
fall to the share of other men. The pious frauds practised 
to increase the devotion and liberality of the people may 
be regarded as certain, in an order founded on illusion, 
lies, and superstition. The supine idleness also and its 
attendant, profound ignorance, with which the convents 
were reproached, admit of no question. No manly or 
elegant knowledge could be expected among men whose 
life, condemned to a tedious uniformity and deprived of all 
emulation, afforded nothing to raise the mind or cultivate 
the genius." ^^ 

130. I question whether monk ever wrote sentences con- 
taining worse grammar than these contain : but as to the 
facts, these " very credible," these '* certain," these " un- 
questionable " facts are, almost upon the face of them, a 
tissue of malignant lies. What should there be '* factions" 
and " quarrels " about, amongst men living so *' idle " and 
*' unambitious " a life? How much harder are the hearts 
of unmarried than those of married ecclesiastics we have 
seen above, in the contrast between the charities of 

" It may be useful to note that these were not among the charges made 
against the members of the reh'gious houses by Henry's inquisitors, 

** Hume, History^ iv., p. 160. 



96 

Catholic and those of Protestant bishops. It is quite 
** credible " that men lost in *• supine idleness," should 
practise frauds to get money, which their very state pre- 
vented them from either keeping or bequeathing, and who 
were totally destitute of all " emulation." The malignity 
of this writer exceeded his cunning, and made him not per- 
ceive that he was in one sentence furnishing strong pre- 
sumptive proof against the truth of another sentence. Yet, 
as his history has been, and is, much read, and as it has 
deceived me along with so many thousands of others, I shall 
upon this subject appeal to several authorities, all Protes- 
tants, mind, in contradiction to these his false and base 
assertions; just remarking by the way, that he himself 
never had a family or a wife, and that he was a great fat 
fellow, fed in considerable part out of public money without 
having merited it by any real public services. 

131. In his History of England he refers not less than 
two hundred times to Bishop Tanner, who was bishop of 
St. Asaph in the reign of George the Second. Let us hear, 
then, what Bishop Tanner, let us hear what this Protestant 
bishop says of the character and effects of the monasteries 
which the savages under Henry VIII. destroyed. Let us 
see how this high authority of Hume agrees with him on 
this, one of the most interesting and important points in 
our history. We are about to witness a greater act of 
plunder, a more daring contempt of law and justice and 
humanity, than ever was in any other case witnessed in 
the whole world. We are going to see thousands upon 
thousands of persons stripped in an instant of all their 
property, torn from their dwellings and turned out into 
the wide world to beg or starve ; and all this, too, in viola- 
tion not only of natural justice but of every law of the 
country, written and unwritten. Let us, then, see what 
was the character of the persons thus treated, and what 
were the effects of the institutions to which they belonged. 
And let us see this, not in the description given by an 



I 



97 

avowed enemy not only of the Catholic but of the Chris- 
tian religion, but in that description which has been given 
us by a Protestant bishop, and in a book written expressly 
to give "an account of all the abbeys, priories, and friaries, 
formerly existing in England and Wales"; bearing in mind 
as we go along, that Hume has, in his History of England, 
referred to this very work upwards of two hundred times, 
taking care, however, not to refer to a word of it relating to 
the important question now before us. 

132. Bishop Tanner, before entering on his laborious 
account of the several monastic institutions, gives us in 
pages 19, 20 and 21 of his preface the following general 
description of the character and pursuits of the monasteries, 
and of the effects of their establishments. I beg you, my 
friends, to keep, as you read Bishop Tanner's descrip- 
tion, the description of Hume constantly in your minds. 
Remember, and look now and then back at his charges 
of ** supine idleness," " profound ignorance," want of all 
** emulation and all manly and elegant knowledge ; " and 
above all things remember his charge of selfishness, his 
charge of "frauds" to get money from the people. The 
bishop speaks thus upon the subject. 

133. " In every great abbey there was a large room 
called the Scriptorium, where several writers made it their 
whole business to transcribe books for the use of the 
library. They sometimes, indeed, wrote the leiger books 
of the house, and the missals, and other books used in 
Divine service, but they were generally upon other works, 
viz., the Fathers, Classics, Histories, &c., &c. John 
Whethamsted, abbot of St. Albans, caused above eighty 
books to be thus transcribed (there was then no printing 
during his abbacy. Fifty-eight were transcribed by the 
care of one abbot at Glastonbury ; and so zealous were 
the monks in general for this work, that they often got 
lands given and churches appropriated for the carrying of 
it on. In all the greater abbeys, there were also persons 



98 



appointed to take notice of the principal occurrences 
the kingdom, and at the end of every year to digest them 
into annals. In these records they particularly preserved 
the memoirs of their founders and benefactors, the years 
and days of their births and deaths, their marriages, 
children and successors ; so that recourse was sometimes 
had to them for proving persons' ages and genealogies ; 
though it is to be feared that some of those pedigrees were 
drawn up from tradition only, and that in most of their 
accounts they were favourable to their friends and severe 
upon their enemies. The constitutions of the clergy in their 
national and provincial synods, and (after the Conquest) 
even acts of parliament, were sent to the abbeys to be 
recorded ; which leads me to m.ention the use and advan- 
tage of these religious houses. For, first, the choicest 
records and treasures in the kingdom were preserved in 
them. An exemplification of the charter of liberties 
granted by King Henry I. (Magna Charta) was sent to 
some abbey in every county to be preserved. Charters 
and Inquisitions relating to the County of Cornwall were 
deposited in the Priory of Bodmin ; a great many rolls 
were lodged in the Abbey of Leicester and Priory of 
Kenilworth, till taken from thence by King Henry III. 
King Edward I. sent to the religious houses to search for 
his title to the kingdom of Scotland, in their leigers and 
chronicles, as the most authentic records for proof of his 
right to that crown. When his sovereignty was acknow- 
ledged in Scotland, he sent letters to have it inserted in 
the chronicles of the Abbey of Winchcomb and the Priory 
of Norwich, and probably of many other such-like places. 
And when he decided the controversy relating to the 
crown of Scotland, between Robert Brus and John Baliol, 
he wrote to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, London, 
requiring them to enter into their chronicles the exempli- 
fication therewith sent of that decision. The learned Mr. 
Selden hath his greatest evidences for the dominion of the 



I 



99 

narrow seas belonging to the King of Great Britain from 
Monastic records. The evidences and money of private 
families were oftentimes sent to these houses to be pre- 
served. The seals of noblemen were deposited there upon 
their deaths. iVnd even the King's money was sometimes 
lodged in them. Secondly, they were schools of learning 
and education ; for every convent had one person or more 
appointed for this purpose ; and all the neighbours that 
desired it might have their children taught grammar and 
church music without any expense to them. In the 
nunneries also young women were taught to work and to 
read English and sometimes Latin also. So that not only 
the lower rank of people who could not pay for their 
learning, but most of the noblemen's and gentlemen's 
daughters were educated in those places. Thirdly, all 
the monasteries were, in effect, great hospitals, and were 
most of them obliged to relieve many poor people every 
day. There were likewise houses of entertainment for 
almost all travellers. Even the nobility and gentry, when 
they were upon the road, lodged at one religious house 
and dined at another, and seldom or never went to inns. 
In short, their hospitality was such, that in the Priory of 
Norwich one thousand five. hundred quarters of malt and 
above eight hundred quarters of wheat, and all other 
things in proportion, were generally spent every year. 
Fourthly, the nobility and gentry provided not only for 
their old servants in these houses by corrodies, but for 
their younger children and impoverished friends, by 
making them first monks and nuns, and in time priors 
and prioresses, abbots and abbesses. Fifthly, they were 
of considerable advantage to the Crown : (i) By the 
profits received from the death of one abbot or prior to 
the election, or rather confirmation, of another. (2) By 
great fines paid for the confirmation of their liberties. 
(3) By many corrodies granted to old servants of the 
Crown, and pensions to the king's clerks and chaplains, 



100 



^^H 



till they got preferment. Sixthly, they were likewise of 
considerable advantage to the places where they had 
their sites and estates : (i) By causing great resort to 
them, and getting grants of fairs and markets for them. 
(2) By freeing them from the forest laws. (3) By letting 
their lands at easy rates. Lastly, they were great orna- 
ments to the country: many of them were really noble 
buildings, and though not actually so grand and neat, yet 
perhaps as much admired in their times as Chelsea and 
Greenwich Hospitals are now. Many of the abbey 
churches were equal, if not superior, to our present 
cathedrals ; and they must have been as much an orna- 
ment to the country, and employed as many workmen in 
building and keeping them in repair, as noblemen's and 
gentlemen's seats now do."** 

134. Now, then, malignant Hume, come up and face 
this Protestant bishop, whose work you have quoted more 
than two hundred times, and who here gives the lie direct 
to all and to every part of your description. Instead of 
your *' supine idleness " we have industry the most patient 
and persevering ; instead of '* your profound ignorance," we 
have in every convent a school for teaching, gratis, all 
useful sciences ; instead of your want of all " manly and 
elegant knowledge," we have the study, the teaching, the 
transcribing, the preserving of the classics ; instead of your 
" selfishness " and your pious " frauds " to get money from 
the people, we have hospitals for the sick, doctors and 
nurses to attend them, and the most disinterested, the most 
kind, the most noble hospitality ; instead of that " slavery " 
which, in fifty parts of your history, you assert to have 
been taught by the monks, we have the freeing of people 
from the forest laws, and the preservation of the Great 
Charter of English liberty ; and you know as well as I, that 
when this Charter was renewed by King John, the renewal 

" Tanner, Notitia Monastica (ed. Nasmith), Preface, pp. xix., xx. 



lOI 

was in fact the work of Archbishop Langton, who roused 
the barons to demand it, he ha\ing, as Tanner observes, 
found the Charter deposited in an abbey ! 

135. Want of room compels me to stop; but here, in 
this one authority, we have ten thousand times more than 
enough to answer that mahgnant Hume and all the 
revilers of monastic life, which revilings it was necessary 
to silence before proceeding, as I shall in the next chapter, 
to describe the base, the cruel, the bloody means by 
which these institutions were devastated and destroyed. 



103 



CHAPTER V. 

136. When, at the close of the foregoing chapter, I 
appeared to content myself with the authority of the 
Protestant Bishop Tanner, as a defender of monastic 
institutions against the attacks of Hume, I had in reserve 
other authorities in abundance, some of which I should 
then have cited if I had had room. Bishop Tanner goes, 
indeed, quite home to every point ; but the matter is of 
such great importance, when we are about to view the 
destruction of these institutions, that out of fifty authori- 
ties that I might refer to I will select four or five. I will 
take one foreign and four English ; and, observe, they are 
all Protestant authorities. 

137. Mallet, History of the Swiss^ vol. i., p. 105. "The 
monks softened by their instructions the ferocious manners 
of the people, and opposed their credit to the tyranny of 
the nobility, who knew no other occupation than war and 
grievously oppressed their neighbours. On this account 
the government of monks was preferred to theirs. The 
people sought them for judges. It was an usual saying, 
that it was better to be governed by the bishop's crosier 
than the monarch's sceptre." 

138. Drake, Literary Hours, vol. ii., p. 435. " The monks 
of Cassins," observes Wharton, " were distinguished not 
only for their knowledge of sciences, but their attention to 
poHte learning and an acquaintance with the classics. 
Their learned abbot Desiderius collected the best Greek 



103 

and Roman authors. The fraternity not only composed 
learned treatises on music, logic, astronomy, and the 
Vitruvian architecture, but likewise employed a portion of' 
their time in transcribing Tacitus, &c. This laudable 
example was, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, fol- 
lowed with great spirit and emulation by many English 
monasteries." 

139. Turner, History of England, vol. ii., p. 332 and 
361. " No tyranny was ever established that was more 
unequivocally the creature of popular will, or longer main- 
tained by popular support ; in no point did personal in- 
terest and public welfare more cordially unite than in the 
encouragement of monasteries." 

140. Bates, Rural Philosophy, p. 322. " It is to be 
lamented that while the Papists are industriously planting 
nunneries and other religious societies in this kingdom, 
some good Protestants are not so far excited to imitate 
their example as to form establishments for the education 
and protection of young women of serious disposition, or 
who are otherwise unprovided, where they might enjoy at 
least a temporary refuge, be instructed in the principles of 
religion, and in all such useful and domestic arts as might 
qualify them who were inclined to return into the world 
for a pious and laudable discharge of the duties of common 
life. Thus might the comfort and welfare of many indivi- 
duals be promoted to the great benefit of society at large ; 
and the interests of Popery, by improving on its own 
principles, be considerably counteracted." 

141. Quarterly Review, December, 181 1. "The world 
has never been so indebted to any body of men as to the 
illustrious order of the Benedictine monks ; but historians, 
in relating the evil of which they were the occasion, too 
frequently forget the good which they produced. Even 
the commonest readers are acquainted with the arch 
miracle-monger, St. Dunstan, whilst the most learned of 
our countrymen scarcely remember the names of those 



104 

admirable men who went from England and became the 
Apostles of the North. Tinian and Juan Fernandez are 
not more beautiful spots on the ocean than Malmesbury, 
Lindisfarne and Jarrow were in the ages of our heptarchy. 
A community of pious men, devoted to literature and 
to the useful arts as well as to religion, seems in those 
days like a green oasis amid the desert. Like stars on a 
moonless night, they shine upon us with a tranquil ray. 
If ever there was a man who could truly be called venerable, 
it was he to whom the appellation is constantly fixed, 
Bede, whose life was passed in instructing his own genera- 
tion and preparing records for posterity. In those days, 
the Church offered the only asylum from the evils to 
which every country was exposed — amidst continual wars 
the Church enjoyed peace — it was regarded as a sacred 
realm by men who, though they hated one another, 
believed and feared the same God. Abused as it was by 
the worldly-minded and ambitious, and disgraced by the 
artifices of the designing and the follies of the fanatic, it 
afforded a shelter to those who were better than the world 
in their youth or weary of it in their age. The wise as well 
as the timid and gentle fled to this Goshen of God, which 
enjoyed its own light, and calm amidst darkness and 
storms." 

142. This is a very elegant passage; but as Turner's 
Protestantism impels him to apply the term "tyranny" 
to that which honest feeling bids him say was ** the crea- 
ture of the popular will," and was produced and upheld by 
** a cordial union of personal interest and public welfare," 
so the Protestantism of the reviewers leads them to talk 
about "evil" occasioned by an Order to whom "the 
world is more indebted than to any other body of men ; " 
and it also leads them to repeat the hackneyed charge 
against St. Dunstan, forgetting, I dare say, that he is one 
of the saints in our Protestant Church calendar! How- 
ever, here is more than enough to serve as an answer to 



I 



I 

I 



I05 

the whole herd of writers who have put forth their venom 
against the monastic Orders. 

143. Can we refer to these authorities, can we see all 
the indubitable proofs of the real Christian charity and 
benevolence which were essentially connected with the 
religion of our forefathers, without feeling indignation 
against those who, from our infancy to our manhood, have 
been labouring to persuade us that the Catholic Church 
produced selfishness, hardness of heart, greediness in the 
clergy, and particularly a want of feeling for the poor ? 
Undeniable as is the fact that the " Reformation " robbed 
the poor of their patrimony, clear as we shall by-and-by 
see the proofs of its power in creating paupers and in 
taking from the higher all compassion for the lower 
classes, how incessant have been the efforts, how crafty 
the schemes, to make us believe precisely the contrary I- 
If the salvation of their souls had been the object they 
had in view, the deceivers could not have laboured with 
more pains and anxiety. They have particularly bent 
their attention to the implanting of their falsehoods in the 
minds of children. The press has teemed for two centuries 
and more with cheap books having this object principally 
in view. Of one instance of this sort I cannot refrain 
from making particular mention, namely, a Fable in a 
Spelling Book, by one Penning, which has been in use 
in England for more than half a century. The fable is 
called " The Priest and the Jester." A man, as the fable 
says, went to a '' Romish Priest," and asked charity of 
him He began by asking for a guinea, but lowered the 
sum till it came to a farthing, and still the priest refused. 
Then the beggar asked for " a blessing," which the priest 
readily consented to give him. " No," said the beggar, " if 
it were worth but one single farthing you would not give it 
me." How indefatigable must have been these deceivers, 
when they could resort to means like these ! What multi- 
tudes of children, how many millions of psople, have by 



io6 

this book alone, had falsehood, the most base and wicked, 
engraven upon their minds ! 

144. To proceed now with our inquiry relative to the 
effects of the monastic institutions, we may observe that 
authorities in this case seemed necessary. The lies were 
of long standing ; hypocritical selfishness, backed by every 
species of violence, tyranny and cruelty, had been at 
work for ages to delude the people of England. Those 
who had fattened upon the spoils of the Church and the 
poor, and who wished still to enjoy the fatness in quiet, 
naturally laboured to persuade the people that those who 
had been despoiled were unworthy people ; that the 
institutions which gave them so much property were 
at least useless ; that the possessors were lazy, ignorant 
and base creatures, spreading darkness over the country 
instead of light, devouring that which ought to have 
sustained worthy persons. When the whole press and 
all the pulpits of a country are leagued for such a purpose, 
and supported in that purpose by the State ; and when 
the reviled party is, by terrors hardly to be described, 
reduced to silence ; in such a case the assailants must 
prevail; the mass of the people must believe what they 
say. Reason, in such a state of things, is out of the 
question. But truth is immortal ; and though she may 
be silenced for a while, there always, at last, comes some- 
thing to cause her to claim her due and to triumph over 
falsehood. 

145. There is now come that which is calculated to give 
our reasoning faculties fair play. We see the land covered 
at last with pauperism, fanaticism, and crime. In short, 
we are now arrived at a point which compels us to inquire 
into the cause of this monstrous state of things. The 
immediate cause we find to be the poverty and degradation 
of the main body of the people ; and these, through many 
stages, we trace back to the " Reformation," one of the 
effects of which was to destroy those monastic institutions 



I 



107 

which, as we shall now see, retained the produce of labour 
in the proper places, and distributed it in a way naturally 
tending to make the lives of the people easy and happy. 

146. The authorities that I have cited ought to be of 
great weight in the question ; but, supposing there to be 
no authorities on the side of these institutions, of what 
more do they stand in need than the unfettered exercise 
of our reason ? Reason, in such a case, is still better than 
authorities ; but who is to resist both ? Let us ask, then, 
whether reason does not reject with disdain the slander 
that has been heaped on the monastic institutions, They 
flourished in England for nine hundred years ; they were 
beloved by the people ; they were destroyed by violence, 
by the plunderer's grasp, and the murderer's knife. Was 
there ever any thing vicious in itself, or evil in its effects, 
held in veneration by a whole people for so long a time ? 
Even in our own time, we see the people of Spain rising 
in defence of their monasteries. 

147. If the monasteries had been the cause of evil, 
would they have been protected with such care by so 
many wise and virtuous kings, legislators, and judges ? 
Perhaps Alfred was the greatest man that ever lived. 
What writer of eminence, whether poet, lawyer, or his- 
torian, has not selected him as the object of his highest 
praises ? As king, as soldier, as patriot, as lawgiver, in 
all his characters he is by all regarded as having been the 
greatest, wisest, most virtuous of men. And is it reason- 
able, then, for us to suppose that he, whose whole soul 
was wrapped up in the hope of making his people free, 
honest, virtuous, and happy, — is it reasonable to suppose 
that he would have been, as he was, one of the most 
munificent founders of monasteries, if those institutions 
had been vicious in themselves or had tended to evil ? 
We have not these institutions and their effects imme- 
diately before our eyes. We do not actually see the 
monasteries. But we know of them two things ; namely, 



io8 

that they were most anxiously cherished by Alfred and 
his tutor Saint Swithun, and that they were destroyed by 
the tyrant, Henry the Eighth, and the ruffian, Thomas 
Cromwell. Upon these two facts alone we might pretty 
safely decide on the merits of these institutions. 

148. And what answer do we ever obtain to this 
argument ? Mr. Mervyn Archdall, in the preface to his 
History of the Irish Monasteries ^ says : ** When we con- 
template the universality of that religious zeal which drew 
thousands from the elegance and comforts of society to 
sequestered solitude and austere maceration ; when we 
behold the greatest and wisest of mankind the dupes of a 
fatal delusion, and even the miser expending his store to 
partake in the felicity of mortified ascetics ; again, when 
we find the tide of enthusiasm subsided and sober reason 
recovered from her delirium and endeavouring, as it were, 
to demolish every vestige of her former frenzy, we have 
a concise sketch of the history of monachism, and no 
common instance of that mental weakness and versatility 
which stamp the character of frailty on the human species. 
We investigate these phenomena in the moral world with 
a pride arising from assumed superiority in intellectual 
powers or higher degrees of civilisation ; our vanity and 
pursuit are kept alive by a comparison so decidedly in 
favour of modern times. "^ Indeed, Mr. Archdall! and 
where are we to look for the proofs or signs of tbL 
" assumed superiority," this "comparison so decidedly in 
favour of modern times ? " Are we to find them in the 
ruins of those noble edifices, of the plunder and demolition 
of which you give us an account ? Are we to find them 
in the total absence of even an attempt to ornament your 
country with any thing to equal them in grandeur or in 
taste ? Are modern times proved to be " decidedly 
superior " to former times by the law that shuts Irishmen 

* Mervyn Archdall, Monasiicon Hibernicuniy Introduction, p. ix< 



\ 



109 

up in their houses from sunset to sunrise ? Are the 
people's living upon pig-diet, their nakedness, their 
hunger, their dying by hundreds from starvation, while 
their ports were crowded with ships carrying provisions 
from their shores, and while an army was fed in the 
country, the business of which army was to keep the 
starving people quiet ; are these amongst the facts on 
which you found your " comparison so decidedly in favour 
of modern times ? " What, then, do you look with " pride " 
to the ball at the Opera house, for the relief of the starving 
people of Ireland, the ball room ** decorated with a trans- 
parency exhibiting an Irishman, as large as life, expiring 
from hunger ? " And do you call the " greatest and wisest 
of mankind " dupes, do you call them the " dupes of a fatal 
delusion," when they founded institutions which rendered 
a thought of Opera-house relief impossible ? Look at the 
present wretched and horrible state of your country, then 
look again at your list of ruins, and then (for you are a 
church parson, I see,) you will, I have no doubt, say that, 
though the former have evidently come from the latter, it 
was " sober reason " and not thirst for plunder that pro- 
duced those ruins, and that it was " frenzy and mental 
weakness" in the " greatest and wisest of mankind " that 
produced the foundations of which those ruins are the 
melancholy memorials ! 

149. The hospitality and other good things proceeding 
from the monasteries, as mentioned by the Protestant 
Bishop Tanner, are not to be forgotten ; but we must take 
a closer view of the subject, in order to do full justice to 
these calumniated institutions. It is our duty to show 
that they were founded in great political wisdom as well 
as in real piety and charity ; that they were not, as the 
malignant and selfish Hume has described them, mere 
dolers out of bread and meat and beer, but that they were 
great diffusers of general prosperity, happiness and con- 
tent ; and that one of their natural and necessary effects 



no 

was to prevent that state of things which sees but two 
classes of people in a community, masters and slaves, a 
very few enjoying the extreme of luxury, and millions 
doomed to the extreme of misery. 

150. From the land all the good things come. Some- 
body must own the land. Those who own it must have 
the distribution of its revenues. If these revenues be 
chiefly distributed amongst the people, from whose labour 
they arise, and in such a way as to afford to them a good 
maintenance on easy terms, the community must be happy. 
If the revenues be alienated in very great part, if they be 
carried away to a great distance, and expended amongst 
those from whose labour no part of them arises, the main 
body of the community must be miserable ; poor-houses, 
jails and barracks must arise. Now, one of the greatest 
advantages attending the monasteries was that they, of 
necessity, caused the revenues of a large part of the lands 
of the country to be spent on the spot whence those 
revenues arose. The hospitals and all the other establish- 
ments of the kind had the same tendency. There were of 
the whole, great and small, not less, on an average, than 
fifty in each county; so that the revenues of the land 
diffused themselves in great part immediately amongst 
the people at large. We all well know how the state of 
a parish becomes instantly changed for the worse, when a 
noble or other great landowner quits the mansion in it 
and leaves that mansion shut up. Every one knows the 
effect which such a shutting up has upon the poor-rates of 
a parish. It is notorious, that the non-residence of the 
clergy and of the nobleman and gentlemen is universally 
complained of as a source of evil to the country. One of 
the arguments, and a great one it is, in favour of severe 
game laws, is that the game causes noblemen and gentle- 
men to reside. What then must have been the effect of 
twenty rich monasteries in every county, expending con- 
stantly a large part of their incomes on the spot ? The 
great cause of the miseries of Ireland is " absenteeship," 



I 



Ill 

that is to say, the absence of the landowners, who draw 
away the revenues of the country and expend them in 
other countries. If Ireland had still her seven or eight 
hundred monastic institutions, great and small, she would 
be as she formerly was, prosperous and happy. There 
would be no periodical famines and typhus fevers ; no 
need of sunset and sunrise laws; no schemes for getting 
rid of a " surplus population " ; none of that poverty and 
degradation that threaten to make a desert of the country, 
or to make it the means ot destroying the greatness of 
England herself. 

151. Somebody must own the lands ; and the question is, 
whether it be best for them to be owned by those who con- 
stantly live — and constantly must live — in the country and 
in the midst of their estates, or by those who always may, 
and who frequently will and do, live at a great distance 
from their lands and draw away the revenues of them to 
be spent elsewhere. The monastics are by many called 
drones. Bishop Tanner has shown us that this charge is 
very false ; but if it were true, is not a drone in a cowl as 
good as a drone in a hat and top-boots ? By drones are 
meant those who do not work ; and do landowners usually 
work ? The lay landowner and his family spend more of 
their revenues in a way not useful to the people than the 
monastics possibly could. But besides this, besides the 
hospitality and charity of the monastics, and besides, more- 
over, the lien — the legal lien— which the main body of the 
people had in many cases to a share, directly or indirectly, 
in the revenues of the monasteries, we are to look at the 
monks and nuns in the very im.portant capacity of land- 
lords and landladies. All historians, however Protestant 
or malignant, agree that they were " easy landlords " ; that 
they let their lands at low rents, and on leases of long 
terms of years ; so that, says even Hume, " the farmers 
regarded themselves as a species of proprietors, always 
taking care to renew their leases before they expired," 



112 

And was there no good in a class of landlords of this sort ? 
Did not they naturally and necessarily create, by slow 
degrees, men of property? Did they not thus cause a 
class of yeomen to exist^real yeomen, independent of the 
aristocracy? And was not this class destroyed by the 
*' Reformation," which made the farmers rack-renters and 
absolute dependants, as we see them to this day ? And 
was this change favourable, then, to political liberty ? 
Monastics could possess no private property, they could 
save no money, they could bequeath nothing. They had 
a life interest in their estate, and no more. They lived, 
received and expended in common. Historians need not 
have told us that they were " easy landlords." They 
must have been such, unless human nature had taken a 
retrograde march expressly for their accommodation. And 
was it not happy for the nation that there was such a class 
of landlords ? What a jump for joy would the farmers of 
England now give, if such a class were to return to-morrow 
to get them out of the hands of the squandering and needy 
lord and his grinding land- valuer ! 

152. Then look at the monastics as causing, in some of 
the most important of human affairs, that fixedness which 
is so much the friend of rectitude in morals, and which so 
powerfully conduces to prosperity, private and public. 
The monastery was a proprietor that never died ; its ten- 
antry had to do with a deathless landlord ; its lands and 
houses never changed owners ; its tenants were liable to 
none of the many of the uncertainties that other tenants 
were ; its oaks had never to tremble at the axe of the 
squandering heir ; its manors had not to dread a change of 
lords ; its villagers had all been born and bred up under 
its eye and care ; their character was of necessity a thing 
of great value, and, as such, would naturally be an object 
of great attention. A monastery was the centre of a circle 
in the country, naturally drawing to it all that were in need 
of relief, advice and protection, and containing a body of 



113 

men or of women having no cares of their own, and having 
wisdom to guide the inexperienced and wealth to reUeve 
the distressed. And was it a good thing then, to plunder 
and devastate these establishments : was it a reformation 
to squander estates thus employed upon lay persons, who 
would not, who could not, and did not, do any part or par- 
ticle of those benevolent facts and acts of public utility 
which naturally arose out of the monastic institutions ? 

153. Lastly, let us look at the monasteries as a resource 
for the younger sons and daughters of the aristocracy, and 
as the means of protecting the government against the in- 
jurious effects of their clamorous wants. There cannot 
exist an aristocracy or body of nobility without the means, 
in the hands of the government, of preventing that body 
from falling into that contempt which is, and always 
must be, inseparable from noble poverty. *' Well," some 
will say, *' why need there be any such body ? " That is 
quite another question : for we have it, and have had it for 
more than a thousand years ; except during a very short 
interval, at the end of which our ancestors eagerly took it 
back again. I must, too, though it really has nothing to 
do with the question before us, repeat my opinion, many 
times expressed, that we should lose more than we should 
gain by getting rid of our aristocracy. 

154. However, this has nothing at all to do with the 
present question : we have the aristocracy, and we must, 
by a public provision of some sort for the younger branches 
of it, prevent it from falling into the degradation inseparable 
from poverty. This provision was, in the times of which 
we are speaking, made by the monasteries, which received 
a great number of its monks and nuns from the families of 
the nobles. This rendered those odious and burdensome 
things, pensions and sinecures, unnecessary. It of course 
spared the taxes. It was a provision that was not 
degrading to the receivers, and it created no grudging 
and discontent amongst the people, from whom the 

8 



114 

receivers took nothing. Another great advantage arising 
from this mode of providing for the younger branches of 
the nobility was, that it secured the government against 
the temptation to give offices and to lodge power in unfit 
hands. Look at our pension and sinecure list; look at 
the list of those who have commands, and who fill other 
offices of emolument, and you will at once see the great 
benefit which must have been derived from institutions 
which left the government quite free to choose com- 
manders, ambassadors, governors and other persons to 
exercise power and to be entrusted in the carrying on of 
the public affairs. These institutions, too, tended to check 
the increase of the race of nobles ; to prevent the persons 
connected with that order from being multiplied to the 
extent to which they naturally would otherwise be multi- 
plied. They tended also to make the nobles not so 
dependent on the Crown, a provision being made for 
their poor relations without the Crown's assistance; and 
at the same time they tended to make the people less 
dependent on the nobles than they otherwise would have 
been. The monasteries set the example as masters and 
landlords, an example that others were, in a great degree, 
compelled to follow. And thus all ranks and degrees were 
benefited by these institutions which, with malignant his- 
torians, have been a subject of endless abuse, and the 
destruction of which they have recorded with so much 
delight as being one of the brightest features in the 
" Reformation " ! 

155. Nor must we by any means overlook the effects of 
those institutions on the mere face of the country. That 
soul must be low and mean indeed which is insensible to 
all feeUng of pride in the noble edifices of its country. 
Love of country, that variety of feeHngs which all together 
constitute what we properly call patriotism, consists in part 
of the admiration of and veneration for ancient and mag- 
nificent proofs of skill and of opulence. The monastics 



I 



"5 

built as well as wrote for posterity. The never-dying 
nature of their institutions set aside, in all their under- 
takings, every calculation as to time and age. Whether 
they built or planted, they set the generous example of 
providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth and 
greatness of generations upon generations yet unborn. 
They executed everything in the very best manner : their 
gardens, fishponds, farms, in all, in the whole of their 
economy, they set an example tending to make the 
country beautiful, to make it an object of pride with the 
people, and to make the nation truly and permanently 
great. Go into any county, and survey, even at this day, 
the ruins of its perhaps twenty abbeys and priories, and 
then ask yourself, " what have we in exchange for these ? " 
Go to the site of some once opulent convent. Look at the 
cloister, now become in the hands of a rack-renter the 
receptacle for dung, fodder and faggot-wood ; see the hall, 
where for ages the widow, the orphan, the aged and the 
stranger found a table ready spread ; see a bit of its walls 
now helping to make a cattle-shed, the rest having been 
hauled away to build a workhouse ; recognise in the side 
of a barn a part of the once magnificent chapel ; and if, 
chained to the spot by your melancholy musings, you be 
admonished of the approach of night by the voice of the 
screech-owl issuing from those arches which once at the 
same hour resounded with the vespers of the monk, and 
which have for seven hundred years been assailed by 
storms and tempests in vain, — if thus admonished of the 
necessity of seeking food, shelter and a bed, lift your eyes 
and look at the white-washed and dry-rotten shell on the 
hill, called the *' gentleman's house," and apprised of the 
" board wages " and the " spring guns," suddenly turn 
your head ; jog away from the scene of devastation ; with 
" old English hospitality " in your mind reach the nearest 
inn, and there, in room half- warmed and half-lighted, and 
with reception precisely proportioned to the presumed 



ii6 

length of your purse, sit down and listen to an account of 
the hypocritical pretences, the base motives, the tyrannical 
and bloody means under which, from which, and by which 
that devastation was effected and that hospitality banished 
for ever from the land. 

156. We have already seen something of these pre- 
tences, motives, and acts of tyranny and barbarity ; we 
have seen that the lust of the chief tyrant was the 
groundwork of what is called the '* Reformation " ; we 
have seen that he could not have proceeded in his 
course without the concurrence of the Parliament ; we 
have seen that to obtain that concurrence he held out to 
those who composed it a participation in the spoils of the 
monasteries ; and when we look at the magnitude of their 
possessions, when we consider the beauty and fertility 
of the spots on which they in general were situated, when 
we think of the envy which the love borne them by the 
people must have excited in the hearts of a great many of 
the noblemen and gentlemen ; when we thus reflect, we are 
not surprised that these were eager for a " Reformation " 
that promised to transfer the envied possessions to them. 

157. When men have power to commit and are resolved 
to commit acts of injustice, they are never at a loss for 
pretences. We shall presently see what were the pre- 
tences under which this devastation of England was 
begun : but to do the work there required a workman, 
as to slaughter an ox there requires a butcher. To turn 
the possessors of so large a part of the estates out of those 
estates, to destroy establishments venerated by the people 
from their childhood, to set all law, divine as well as 
human, at defiance, to violate every principle on which 
property rested, to rob the poor and helpless of the means 
of sustenance, to deface the beauty of the country and 
make it literally a heap of ruins ; to do those things there 
required a suitable agent, and that agent the tyrant found 
in Thomas Cromwell, whose name, along with that of 



117 

Cranmer, ought " to stand for aye accursed in the 
calendar." This Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith 
of Putney, in Surrey.^ He had been an underling of 
some sort in the family of Cardinal Wolsey, and had 
recommended himself to the King by his sycophancy to 
him and his treachery to his old master. The King now 
became head of the Church, and having the supremacy to 
exercise had very judiciously provided himself with Cran- 
mer as a primate, and to match him he provided himself 
with Cromwell, who was equal to Cranmer in impiousness 
and baseness, rather surpassed him in dastardliness, and 
exceeded him decidedly in quality of ruffian. All nature 
could not perhaps have afforded another man so fit to be 
the "Royal Vicegerent and Vicar-general" of the new 
head of the English Church.* 

158. Accordingly, with this character he was invested. 
He was to exercise " all the spiritual authority belong- 
ing to the king, for the due administration of justice 
in all cases touching the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and 
the godly reformation and redress of errors, heresies 
and abuses in the said church." We shall very soon see 
proofs enough of the baseness of this man, for whom 
ruffian is too gentle a term. What chance, then, did the 
monasteries stand in his hands ? He was created a peer. 
He sat before the primate in Parliament, he sat above all 



^ The first certain date in the career of Thomas Cromwell is 1512, when 
he seems to have been settled as a merchant at Middelborough. In 1523 
he entered Parliament, and two years later he was settled in London, en- 
gaged in the occupations of a merchant, lawyer and money-lender. For 
an account of his career as the chief instrument in the destruction of the 
religious houses, see Gasquet, Henry VIIL and the English Monasteries, 
i., chap. X. 

* Upon the acquisition, by Henry, of the supremacy over the Church, 
Cromwell was appointed the King's vicar in matters spiritual. In this 
capacity he took the first place in all meetings of the clergy, sitting even 
before the Archbishop of Canterbury. 



ii8 



the bishops in assemblies of the clergy, he took precedence 
of all the nobles, whether in office or out of office, and, as 
in character so in place, he was second only to the chief 
tyrant himself. 

159. In order to begin the '* godly reformation," that is 
to say, the work of plunder, the '* Vicegerent " set on foot 
a visitation of the monasteries ! * Dreadful visitation ! He, 
active as he was in wickedness, could not do all the work 
himself. He, therefore, appointed deputies to assist in 
making this visitation.^ The kingdom was divided into 
districts for this purpose, and two deputies were appointed 
to visit each district. The object was to obtain grounds 
of accusation against the monks and nuns. When we 
consider what the object was, and what was the character 
of the man to whom the work was committed, we may 
easily imagine what sort of men these deputies were. 
They were, in fact, fit to be the subalterns of such a chief.' 
Think of a respectable, peaceful, harmless, and pious 
family, broken in upon, all of a sudden, by a brace of 
burglars, with murder written on their scowling brows, 
demanding an instant production of their title-deeds, 
money, and jewels : imagine such a scene as this, and you 
have then some idea of the visitations of these monsters, 

* Hallam {The Constitutional History of England^ i., loth ed., p. 70) 
says: — *' The King indeed was abundantly willing to replenish his ex- 
chequer by violent means, and to avenge himself on those who gainsaid his 
supremacy ; but it was this able statesman (Thomas Cromwell) who, 
prompted both by the natural appetite of ministers for the subjects' money 
andj as has been generally surmised, by a secret partiality towards the 
Reformation, devised and carried on with complete success, if not with the 
utmost prudence, a measure of no inconsiderable hazard and difficulty." 

* This visitation was conducted in the autumn of 1535 and the beginning 
of 1536, by Cromwell's agents. For an account of their methods see 
Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries ^ i., chap. vii. 

" It is very generally allowed that nothing could well be worse than the 
charactei of the instruments chosen for the work of blackening the charac- 
ter of the monastic establishments* See ibid»y chap. xL 



119 

who came with the threat of the tyrant on their lips, who 
menaced the victims with charges of high treason, who 
wrote in their reports, not what was, but what their merci- 
less employers wanted them to write.' 

i6o. The monks and nuns, who had never dreamed of 
the possibility of such proceedings, who had never had an 
idea that Magna Charta and all the laws of the land could 
be set aside in a moment, and whose recluse and peaceful 
hves rendered them wholly unfit to cope with at once 
crafty and desperate villainy, fell before these ruffians as 
chickens fall before the kite. The reports made by these 
villains met with no contradiction ; ^ the accused parties 
had no means of making a defence ; there was no court 
for them to appear in ; they dared not, even if they had 
had the means, to offer a defence or make a complaint ; for 
they had seen the horrible consequences, the burnings, the 
rippings up, of all those of their brethren who had ven- 
tured to whisper their dissent from any dogma or decree of 
the tyrant. The project was to despoil people of their 
property; and yet the parties from whom the property 

' The reports furnished to Cromwell by his instruments are contained in 
their letters and the documents known as the Comperta Monastica. For 
an examination ot these see ibid,^ chap. ix. Fuller, the Protestant his- 
torian, remarks that *' the Inquisitors were men who well understood the 
message they were sent on, and would not come back without a satisfactory 
answer to him who sent them, knowing themselves to be no losers 
thereby." 

" This is true only of the time before the meeting of Parliament in 
March, 1536, at which the lesser houses were granted to the King. Sub- 
sequent visitors, appointed by the king from the county gentry, sent in 
formal reports distinctly contradicting many of the facts alleged by 
Cromwell's agents. Mr. Gairdner {Calendar^ vol. x., p. xlvi.) says that in 
these returns "the characters given of the inmates (of the houses visited) 
are almost uniformly good;" and it is significant that "the country 
gentlemen who sat on the commission somehow came to a very different 
conclusion from that of Drs. Layton and Legh," two of Cromwell's instru- 
ments. {Cf. Dublin Review, April, 1894, " Overlooked Testimonies to 
the character of the English monasteries on the eve of their suppression.") 



I20 



was to be taken were to have no court in which to plead 
their cause, no means of obtaining a hearing, could make 
even no complaint but at the peril of their lives. They 
and those who depended on them were to be at once 
stripped of this great mass of property, without any other 
ground than that of reports made by men sent, as the 
malignant Hume himself confesses, for the express purpose 
of finding a pretence for the dissolution of the monasteries 
and for the King's taking to himself property that had 
never belonged to him or his predecessors. 

i6i. Hume dares not, in the face of such a multitude of 
facts that are upon record to the contrary, pretend that 
these reports were true, but he does his best to put a gloss 
upon them, as we have seen in paragraph 129. He says, 
in order to effect by insinuation that which he does not 
venture to assert, that **it is, indeed, probable that the 
blind submission of the people during those ages rendered 
the friars and nuns more unguarded and more dissolute 
than they are in any Roman Catholic country at present." 
Oh ! say you so ? And why more blind than now ? It is 
just the same religion, there are the same rules, the people, 
if blind then, are blind now ; and it would be singular 
indeed, that when dissoluteness is become more common 
in the world the "friars and nuns" should have become 
more guarded ! However, we have here his accquittal of 
the monasteries of the present day, and that is no small 
matter. It will be difficult, I believe, to make it appear 
" probable " that they were more unguarded or more 
dissolute in the sixteenth century, unless we believe that 
the profound piety (which Hume calls superstition) of the 
people was not partaken of by the inhabitants of convents. 
Before we can listen to his insinuations in favour of these 
reports, we must believe that the persons belonging to the 
religious communities were a body of cunning creatures, 
believing in no part of that religion which they professed, 
and we must extend this our belief even to those numerous 



1 



I 



121 

communities of women who devoted their whole lives to 
the nursing of the sick poor ! 

162. However, upon reports thus obtained, an Act of 
Parliament was passed in March, 1536-^the same year that 
saw the end of Anne Boleyn — for the suppression, that is to 
say, confiscation, of three hundred and seventy-six monas- 
teries, and for granting their estates, real and personal, to 
the King and his heirs ! ^ He took plate, jewels, gold and 
silver images, and ornaments. This act of monstrous 
tyranny was, however, base as the Parliament was and 
full as it was of greedy plunderers, not passed without 
some opposition. Hume says that " it does not appear 
that any opposition was made to this important law." ^" 
He frequently quotes Spelman as an historical authority, 
but it did not suit him to quote Spelman's History of 
Sacrilege, in which this Protestant historian says that " the 
bill stuck long in the Lower House and could get no pas- 
sage, when the king commanded the Commons to attend 
him in the forenoon in his gallery, where he let them wait 
till late in the afternoon, and then, coming out of his 
chamber, walking a turn or two amongst them and looking 
angrily on them, first on one side and then on the other, 
at last, * I hear (saith he) that my bill will not pass, but I 
will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads,' and 
without other rhetoric returned to his chamber. Enough 
was said, the bill passed, and all was given him as he 
desired." " 

" Parliament expressly declared that it acted on the strength of the royal 
declaration that the charges made against the good name of the religious 
houses were true. There was almost certainly no attempt to enquire into 
or verify the statements of Cromwell's agents, and it is extremely unlikely 
that their reports were ever exhibited in the Parliament House. For this 
see Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries^ i., chap. viii. 

** Hume, History (Murray's reprint), ii., p. 360. 

" Spelman, History of Sacrilege (ed. 1853), ?• 206. Spelman was bom 
in 1562, less than thirty years after the event. 



123 



1 



i63- Thus, then, it was an act of sheer tyranny ; it was 
a pure Algerine proceeding at last. The pretences availed 
nothing, the reports of Cromwell's myrmidons were not 
credited, every artifice had failed ; resort was had to the 
halter and the axe to accomplish that " Reformation," of 
which the Scotch historian, Burnet, has called this monster 
the first-born son ! Some such man, he says, was neces- 
sary to bring about this "great and glorious event." 
What ! was ever good yet produced by wickedness so 
atrocious ? Did any man but this Burnet and his country- 
man, Hume, ever affect to believe that such barefaced 
injustice and tyranny were justified on the ground of their 
tending to good consequences ? 

164. In the next chapter, when I shall have given an 
account of the whole of that devastation and sacking of 
which we have, as yet, only seen a mere beginning, I shall 
come to the consequences, not only to the monks and nuns, 
but to the people at large ; and shall show how a founda- 
tion was, in this very Act of Parliament, laid for that 
pauperism, misery, degradation and crime, which are now 
proposed to be checked by laws to export the people to 
foreign lands. 



123 



CHAPTER VI. 

165. At the close of the foregoing chapter we saw the 
beginning only of the devastation of England. In the 
present chapter we shall see its horrible progress, as far as 
there was time for that progress during the reign of the 
remorseless tyrant Henry VIII. We have seen in what 
manner was obtained the first act for the suppression of 
monasteries, that is to say, in reality, for robbing the 
proprietors of estates and also the poor and the stranger. 
But I must give a more full and particular account of the 
Act of Parliament itself, before I proceed to the deeds 
committed in consequence of it. 

166. The Act was passed in the year 1536, and in the 
27th year of the King's reign. The preamble of the Act 
contains the reasons for its enactments ; and as this Act 
really began the ruin and degradation of the main body of 
the people of England and Ireland, as it was the first step 
taken in legal form for robbing the people under pre- 
tence of reforming their religion, as it was the precedent 
on which the future plunderers proceeded until they had 
completely impoverished the country, as it was the first 
of that series of deeds of rapine by which this formerly 
well-fed and well-clothed people have, in the end, been 
reduced to rags and to a worse than jail-allowance of food, 
I will insert the lying and villainous preamble at full length. 
Englishmen in general suppose that there were always 
poor-laws and paupers in England. They ought to re- 
member that for nine hundred years, under the Catholic 



124 

religion, there were neither. They ought, when they hear 
the parson cry " no-popery," to answer him by the cry of 
"no-pauperism." They ought above all things to en- 
deavour to ascertain how it came to pass that this land of 
roast beef was changed, all of a sudden, into a land of dry 
bread or of oatmeal porridge. Let them attend, then, to 
the base and hypocritical pretences that they will find in 
the following preamble to this atrocious act of pillage. 

167. " Forasmuch as manifest synne, vicious, carnal and 
abominable Hving is dayly used and committed commonly 
in such Httle and small Abbeys, Priories, and other Reli- 
gious Houses of monks, canons and nuns, where the 
congregation of such religious persons is under the 
number of twelve persons, whereby the governors of 
such Religious Houses, and their Convent, spoyle, de- 
stroye, consume, and utterly waste, as well as their 
churches, monasteries, priories, principal farms, granges, 
lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as the ornaments 
of their churches, and their goods and chattels, to the 
high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good reli- 
gion, and to the great infamy of the King's Highness and 
the realm, if redress should not be had thereof. And 
albeit that many continual Visitations hath been heretofore 
had by the space of two hundred years and more, for an 
honest and charitable reformation of such unthrifty, car- 
nal, and abominable living, yet nevertheless little or none 
amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious living 
shamelessly increaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed 
custom so rooted and infected, that a great multitude of 
the religious persons in such small Houses do rather 
choose to rove abroad in apostacy, than to conform them- 
selves to the observation of good religion ; so that without 
such small Houses be utterly suppressed, and the religious 
persons therein committed to great and honourable Monas- 
teries of religion in this realm where they may be com- 
pelled to live religiously, for reformation of their lives, 



I 



125 

the same else be no redress nor reformation in that 
behalf. In consideration whereof the King's most royal 
Majesty, being supreme Head on Earth, under God, of the 
Church of England, dayly studying and devysing the in- 
crease, advancement and exaltation of true doctrine and 
virtue in the said Church, to the only glory and honour 
of God, and the total extirping and destruction of vice and 
sin, having knowledge that the premises be true, as well 
as the accompts of his late Visitations, as by sundry 
credible informations, considering also that divers and 
great solemn Monasteries of this realm, wherein (thanks 
be to God) religion is right well kept and observed, be 
destitute of such full number of religious persons as 
they ought and may keep, hath thought good that a plain 
declaration should be made of the premises, as well to 
the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, as to other his loving 
subjects the Commons in this present Parliament assem- 
bled : Whereupon the said Lords and Commons, by a 
great deliberation, finally be resolved that it is and shall 
be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for 
the honour of this his realm, that the possessions of 
such small Religious Houses, now being spent, spoiled, 
and wasted for increase and maintenance of sin, should 
be used and committed to better uses, and the unthrifty 
religious persons so spending the same, to be compelled 
to reform their lives. "^ 

1 68. This preamble was followed by enactments giving 
the whole of the property to the King, his heirs and 
assigns, '* to do and use therewith according to their own 
wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour 



' The Bill was in all probability brought up to the Commons by the 
King in person. A letter written from London on March 13 seems to 
refer to this measure as having been presented to the House for considera- 
tion by Henry, on Saturday, March ii, 1536, "and on Wednesday next 
he will be there again to hear their minds" (Wright, Letters on the Sup- 
pression of the Monasteries ^ Camden Society, p. 36). 



126 

and profit of this realm.'* Besides the lands and houses 
and stock, this tyrannical act gave him the household 
goods, and the gold, silver, jewels, and every other thing 
belonging to those monasteries. Here was a breach of 
Magna Charta in the first place, a robbery of the monks 
and nuns in the next place, and, in the third place, a 
robbery of the indigent, the widow, the orphan and the 
stranger. The parties robbed, even the actual possessors 
of the property, were never heard in their defence ; there 
was no charge against any particular convent ; the charges 
were loose and general, and levelled against all convents 
whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum. This alone 
was sufficient to show that the charges were false ; for 
who will believe that the alleged wickedness extended to 
all whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum, and that, 
when those revenues got above that point, the wickedness 
stopped ?* It is clear that the reason for stopping at that 
point was that there was yet something to be done with 
the nobles and gentry before a seizure of the great monas- 
teries could be safely attempted. The weak were first 
attacked, but means were very soon found for attacking 
and sacking the remainder. 

169. The moment the tyrant got possession of this class 
of the Church estates he began to grant them away to his 
" assigns," as the act calls them. Great promises had 
been held out that the King, when in possession of these 
estates, would never more want taxes from the people ;• 

* For an examination into the charges made against the monks by Crom- 
well's visitors, see Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries^ 
ii., chap. ix. 

" Marillac, the French Ambassador, in 1540 writes that *' Henry em- 
ployed preachers and ministers who went about to preach and persuade 
the people that he could employ the ecclesiastical revenues in hospitals, 
colleges and other foundations for the public good, which would be a much 
better use than that they should support lazy and useless monks " {Inven- 
taire Analytique^ No. 242). Nicholas Harpsfield also declares that he was 



I 



127 

and it is possible that he thought that he should be able 
to do without taxes ; but he soon found that he was not 
destined to keep the plunder to himself, and that, in short, 
he must make a sudden stop, if not actually undo all that 
he had done, unless he divided the spoil with others, who 
instantly poured in upon him for their share, and they so 
beset him that he had not a moment's peace. They knew 
that he had good things; they had taken care to enable 
him to have " assigns " ; and they, as they intended from 
the first, would give him no rest until he, ** to the pleasure 
of Almighty God and the honour and profit of the realm," 
made them those " assigns." 

170. Before four years had passed over his head he 
found himself as poor as if he had never confiscated a 
single convent, so sharp set were the pious reformers and 
so eager to " please Almighty God." When complaining 
to Cromwell of the rapacity of the applicants for grants he 
exclaimed, ** By our Lady ! the cormorants, when they 
have got the garbage, will devour the dish." Cromwell 
reminded him that there was much more yet to come. 
** Tut, man," said the King, " my whole realm would not 
staunch their maws." However, he attempted this very 
soon after by a seizure of the larger monasteries. 

171. We have seen, in paragraph 167, that the parHa- 
ment, when they enabled him to confiscate the smaller 
monasteries, declared that in the " great and solemn 
monasteries (thanks be to God) religion is right well kept 
and observed." It seemed, therefore, to be a work of 
some difficulty to discover (in so short a time after this 
declaration was made) reasons for the confiscation of these 
larger monasteries. But tyranny stands in need of no 

present at a sermon preached by Archbishop Cranmer at St. Paul's Cross 
in which he told them that with the revenues of the abbeys Henry would 
not *' from that time . . have need to put people to any manner of pay- 
ment or charge for his or the realm's affairs" {The Pretended Divorce^ ed. 
N. Pocock, Camden Society, p. 292). 



128 



I 



reasons, and in this case no reasons were alleged. Crom- 
well and his myrmidons beset the heads of these great 
establishments ; they threatened, they promised, they Hed, 
and they bullied. By means the most base that can be 
conceived they obtained from some few what they called 
a *' voluntary surrender." However, where these unjust 
and sanguinary men met with sturdy opposition they 
resorted to false accusations, and procured the murder of 
the parties under pretence of their having committed high 
treason. It was under this infamous pretence that the 
tyrant hanged and ripped up and quartered the abbot of 
the famous abbey of Glastonbury, whose body was 
mangled by the executioner, and whose head and limbs 
were hung up on what is called the Tor, which overlooks 
the abbey.* So that the surrender, wherever it did take 
place, was precisely of the nature of those ** voluntary 
surrenders " which men make of their purses when the 
robber's pistol is at their temple or his blood-stained 
knife at their throat. 

172. After all, however, even to obtain a pretence of 
voluntary surrender was a work too troublesome for 
Cromwell and his ruffian visitors, and much too slow for 
the cormorants who waited for the plunder. Without more 
ceremony, therefore, an act was passed (31 Henry VHI., 
chapter 13) giving all these " surrendered " monasteries to 
the King, his heirs and assigns, and also all other monas- 
teries, and all hospitals and colleges into the bargain !® 

* Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, was hanged November 
I5> 1539- For an account of the proceedings in his case, as well as in the 
process of attainder and execution of the Abbots of Reading and Colchester, 
see Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries y ii., chap. ix. 

^ This Act, passed on May 19, 1539, merely secured to the King any 
property which **by any means had come into his hands by supercession, 
dissolution or surrender since the 4th of February, 1536." It was in no 
sense an act of suppression, as is often taken for granted, and the last 
declaration of the Parliament as to the state of the greater monastic houses 



129 

It is useless to waste our time in uttering exclamations 
or in venting curses on the memory of the monsters who 
thus made a general sacking of this then fine, rich, and 
beautiful country, which, until now, had been for nine 
hundred years the happiest country, and the greatest 
country too, that Europe had ever seen. 

173. The carcass being thus laid prostrate, the rapacious 
vultures who had assisted in the work flew on it and 
began to tear it in pieces. The people here and there 
rose in insurrection against the tyrant's satellites ; but 
deprived of their natural leaders, who had for the most 
part placed themselves on the side of tyranny and plun- 
der, what were the mere common people to do ? Hume 
affects to pity the ignorance of the people (as writers now 
affect to pity the ignorance of the country people in Spain) 
in showing their attachment to the monks. Gross ignor- 
ance,, to be sure, to prefer easy landlords, leases for life, 
hospitality and plenty ; " gross ignorance and supersti- 
tion " to prefer these to grinding rack-rents, buying small 
beer at bishop's palaces, and living on parish pay! We 
shall see shortly how soon horrid misery followed these 
tyrannical proceedings : but we must trace Cromwell and 
his ruffians in their work of confiscating, plundering, 
pillaging and devastating. 

174. Tyrants have often committed robberies on their 
people; but in all cases but this, in England at least, there 
was always something of legal process observed. In this 
case there was no such thing. The base parliament who 
were to share, and who did most largely share, in the 
plunder, had given not only the lands and houses to the 
tyrant, or rather, had taken them to themselves, but had 
disposed, in the same short way, of all the moveable 
goods, stock on farms, crops and, which was of more con- 



is that they were in an excellent state. No general measure of compulsory 
dissolution was passed at this or any subsequent time. 



130 

sequence, of the gold, silver and jewels. Let the reader 
judge of the ransackings that now took place. The poorest 
of the convents had some images, vases, and other things 
of gold or silver. Many of them possessed a great deal in 
this way. The altars of their churches were generally 
enriched with the precious metals, if not with costly 
jewels ; and, which is not to be overlooked, the people in 
those days were honest enough to suffer all these things to 
remain in their places without a standing army and with- 
out police officers. 

175. Never in all probabihty since the world began 
was there so rich a harvest of plunder. The ruffians of 
Cromwell entered the convents, they tore down the altars 
to get away the gold and silver, ransacked the chests and 
drawers of the monks and nuns, tore off the covers of books 
that were ornamented with the precious metals. These 
books were all in manuscript. Single books had taken in 
many cases half a long life-time to compose and to copy out 
fair. Whole libraries, the getting of which together had 
taken ages upon ages and had cost immense sums of 
money, were scattered abroad by these hellish ruffians 
when they had robbed the covers of their rich ornaments. 
The ready money in the convents down to the last shilling 
was seized. In short, the most rapacious and unfeeling 
soldiery never, in town delivered up to be sacked, pro- 
ceeded with greediness, shamelessness, and brutality to be 
at all compared with those of these heroes of the Protestant 
Reformation ; and this, observe, towards persons, women 
as well as men, who had committed no crime known to 
the laws, who had had no crime regularly laid to their 
charge, who had had no hearing in their defence, a large 
part of whom had within a year been declared by this 
same parliament to lead most godly and useful lives, the 
whole of whose possessions were guaranteed to them by 
the Great Charter as much as the King's crown was to 
him, and whose estates were enjoyed for the benefit of the 



131 

poor as well as for that of these plundered possessors 
themselves. 

176. The tyrant was, of course, the great pocketer of 
this species of plunder. Cromwell carried, or sent it to him 
in parcels, twenty ounces of gold at one time, fifty ounces 
at another ; now a parcel of precious stones of one sort, 
then a parcel of another. Hume, whose main object is to 
blacken the Catholic religion, takes every possible occa- 
sion for saying something or other in praise of its des- 
troyers. He could not, he was too cunning to ascribe 
justice or humanity to a monster whose very name signifies 
injustice and cruelty. He therefore speaks of his high 
spirit, his magnificence and generosity. It was a high- 
spirited, magnificent and generous King, to be sure, who 
sat in his palace in London to receive with his own hands 
the gold, silver, jewels and pieces of money of which his 
unoffending subjects had been robbed by ruffians sent by 
himself to commit the robbery. One of the items runs in 
these words : " Item, Delivered unto the King's royal 
Majesty, the same day, of the same stuffe, foure chalices of 
golde, with foure patens of golde to the same, and a spoon 
of golde, weighing altogether an hundred and six ounces. 
Received : Henry Rex." 

177. There are high-spirit, magnificence and generosity I 
Amongst the stock of this "generous prince's" pawn- 
broker's shop — or rather, his store- house of stolen goods — 
were images of all sorts, candlesticks, sockets, cruets, 
cups, pixes, goblets, basins, spoons, diamonds, sapphires, 
pearls, finger-rings, ear-rings, pieces of money of all values, 
even down to shillings, bits of gold and silver torn from 
the covers of books, or cut and beaten out of the altars. 
In cases where the woodwork, either of altars, crosses or 
images, was inlaid with precious metal, the wood was 
frequently burnt to get at the metal. Even the Jew- 
thieves of the present day are not more expert at their 
trade than the myrmidons of Cromwell were. And, with 



132 

these facts before us — these facts, undenied and undeni- 
able ; with these facts before us, must we not be the most 
profound hypocrites that the world ever saw, must we not 
be the precise contrary of that which Englishmen have 
always been thought to be, if we still affect to believe that 
the destruction of the shrines of our forefathers arose from 
motives of conscience ? 

178. The parcel of plunder mentioned in the last para- 
graph but one, brought into this royal Peachum, was equal 
in value to about eight thousand pounds of money of the 
present day ; and that parcel was, perhaps, not a hundredth 
part of what he received in this way. Then who is to 
suppose that the plunderers did not keep a large share to 
themselves ? Did subaltern plunderers ever give in just 
accounts ? It is manifest that from this specimen the 
whole amount of the goods of which the convents were 
plundered must have been enormous. The reforming 
gentry ransacked the cathedral churches as well as the 
convents and their churches. Whatever pile contained 
the greatest quantity of *' the same stuffe " seemed to be 
the object of their most keen rapacity. Therefore it is 
by no means surprising that they directed, at a very early 
stage of their pious and honest progress, their hasty steps 
towards Canterbury, which, above all other places, had 
been dipped in the " manifeste synne " of possessing rich 
altars, tombs, gold and silver images, together with 
*' manifestly synneful" diamonds and other precious stones. 
The whole of this city, famed as the cradle of English 
Christianity, was prize ; and the " Reformation " people 
hastened to it with that alacrity and that noise of antici- 
pated enjoyment which we observe in the crows and mag* 
pies when flying to the spot where a horse or an ox has 
accidentally met with its death. 

179. But there were at Canterbury two objects by 
which the " Reformation " birds of prey were particularly 
attracted ; namely, the monastery of Saint Austin and the 



133 

tomb of Thomas k Becket. The former of these renowned 
men, to whose preaching and whose long Hfe of incessant 
and most disinterested labour England owed the establish- 
ment of Christianity in the land, had for eight or nine 
centuries been regarded as the Apostle of England. His 
shrine was in the monastery dedicated to him ; and as it 
was in all respects a work of great magnificence, it offered 
a plenteous booty to the plunderers, who, if they could 
have got at the tomb of Jesus Christ Himself, and had 
found it equally rich, would beyond all question have 
torn it to pieces. But rich as this prize was, there was a 
greater in the shrine of Thomas a Becket, in the cathedral 
church. Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in 
the reign of Henry H., who resisted that King when the 
latter was manifestly preparing to rob the Church and to 
enslave and pillage the people, had been held in the highest 
veneration all over Christendom for more than three hun- 
dred years when the Reformation plunderers assailed his 
tomb ; but especially was his name venerated in England, 
where the people looked upon him as a martyr to their 
liberties as well as their religion, he having been bar- 
barously murdered by ruffians sent from the king, and for 
no other cause than that he persevered in resisting an 
attempt to violate the Great Charter. Pilgrimages were 
continually made to his tomb ; offerings incessantly poured 
into it ; churches and hospitals and other establishments 
of piety and charity were dedicated to him, as, for instance, 
the church of St. Thomas, in the City of London, the 
monastery of Sende, in Surrey, the hospital of St. Thomas, 
in the borough of Southwark, and things of this sort, in 
great numbers, all over the country. The offerings at his 
shrine had made it exceedingly rich and magnificent. A 
king of France had given it a diamond supposed to be the 
most valuable then in Europe. Hume, never losing sight 
of the double object of maligning the Catholic religion and 
degrading the EngUsh nation, ascribes this sort of half- 



134 

adoration of Becket to the craft of the priests and to the 
folly and superstition of the people. He is vexed to death 
to have to relate that more than a hundred thousand pil- 
grims to Backet's shrine have been assembled at one time 
in Canterbury. Indeed! why, then, there must have been 
some people living in England even in those old times ; 
and those people must have had some wealth too ; though, 
according to the whole tenor of the lying book, which the 
Scotch call our history, this was, at the time I am now 
speaking of, a poor, beggarly, scarcely inhabited country. 
How could they find lodging and entertainment for a hun- 
dred thousand grown persons ? And this too, observe, at 
one corner of the island. None but persons of some sub- 
stance could have performed such a journey. Here is a 
fact that just slips out sideways, which is of itself much 
more than enough to make us reflect and inquire before we 
swallow what the Scotch philosophers are now presenting 
to us on the subjects of national wealth and population. 
And then as to the craft and superstition which Hume 
says produced this concourse of pilgrims. Just as if either 
were necessary to produce unbounded veneration for the 
name of a man of whom it was undeniably true that he 
had sacrificed his life, and that, too, in the most signal 
manner, for the rights and liberties and religion of his 
country. Was it " folly and superstition," or was it wis- 
dom and gratitude and real piety to show, by overt acts, 
veneration for such a man ? The bloody tyrant, who had 
sent More and Fisher to the block, and who of course 
hated the name of Becket, caused his ashes to be dug up 
and scattered in the air, and forbade the future insertion of 
his name in the calendar.** We do not, therefore, find it in 



• St. Thomas was declared a traitor in the autumn of 1538, and his name 
was ordered to be erased from all church calendars and his statues to be 
destroyed. Fr. Morris, in The Relics of St. Thomas ^ thinks it almost 
certain that the ashes of the saint were burned. 



'35 

the calendar in the Common Prayer Book ; but, and it is a 
most curious fact, we find it in Moore's Almanack ; in that 
almanack it is for this very year 1825; and thus, in spite 
of the ruthless tyrant and in spite of all the liars of the 
*' Reformation," the English nation has always continued 
to be just and grateful to the memory of this celebrated 
man. 

180. But to return to the Reformation robbers : here was 
a prize ! This tomb of Becket was of wood, most ex- 
quisitely wrought, inlaid abundantly with the precious 
metals, and thickly set with precious stones of all sorts.' 
Here was an object for '* Reformation " piety to fix its 
godly eyes upon ! Were such a shrine to be found in one 
of our churches now, how the swaddlers would cry out for 
another '* Reformation ! " The gold, silver and jewels 
filled two chests, each of which required six or eight men 
of that day (when the labourers used to have plenty of 
meat) to move them to the door of the cathedral."® How 
the eyes of Hume's *' high-minded, magnificent, and 
generous prince" must have glistened when the chests 
were opened ! They vied, I dare say, with the diamonds 
themselves. No robbers of which we have ever had an 
account equalled these robbers in rapacity, in profligacy, 
and in insolence. But where is the wonder ? The tyrant's 
proclamations had now the force of laws ; he had bribed 
the people's natural leaders to his side ; his will was law; 
and that will constantly sought plunder and blood. 

' A French lady who visited Canterbury in 1538 describes the shrine as 
a marvel of riches, v^^hich, "had she not seen, all the men in the world 
could never have made her believe it " (Ellis, Original Letters^ first series, 
ii., 107). For some account of the riches of the shrine, " the least valuable 
portion of which was the gold," according to Erasmus, see Gasquet, Henry 
VIII. and the English Monasteries, ii., pp. 405-407. 

• Nicholls, Erasmus' Pilgrimages, p. 190, quoting the account in Cott. 
MS., Tiberius E. viii. f. 269, from which Stowe derived his information. 
See also Gasquet, ut sup.y ii., p. 408. 



136 

i8i. The monasteries were now plundered, sacked, 
gutted; for this last is the proper word whereby to de- 
scribe the deed. As some comfort, and to encourage us to 
endure the horrid relation, we may here bear in mind that 
we shall, by-and-by, see the base ruffian, Cromwell, after 
being the chief instrument in the plunder, laying his mis- 
creant head on the block. But to seize the estates and to 
pillage the churches and apartments of the monasteries was 
not all. The noble buildings, raised in the view of lasting 
for countless ages ; the beautiful gardens ; these ornaments 
of the country must not be suffered to stand, for they con- 
tinually reminded the people of the rapacity and cruelty 
of their tyrant and his fellow-plunderers and partakers in 
the plunder. How the property in the estates was dis- 
posed of we shall see further on, but the buildings must 
come down. To go to work in the usual way would have 
been a labour without end, so that in most instances 
gunpowder was resorted to, and thus, in a few hours, the 
most magnificent structures, which it had required ages 
upon ages to bring to perfection, were made heaps of ruins, 
pretty much such as many of them remain even unto this 
day. In many cases those who got the estates were bound 
to destroy the buildings, or to knock them partly down, so 
that the people should at once be deprived of all hope of 
seeing a revival of what they had lost, and in order to give 
them encouragement to take leases under the new owners.* 

182. The whole country was thus disfigured ; it had the 
appearance of a land recently invaded by the most brutal 
barbarians ; and this appearance, if we look well into it, 
it has even to this day. Nothing has ever yet come to 
supply the place of what was then destroyed. This is 
the view for us to take of the matter. It is not a mere 
matter of religion, but a matter of rights, liberties, real 

^ See many examples of the destruction of monastic buildings, in Gas« 
quet, «/ sup. , ii. , chapters viii. and x. 






I 



137 

wealth, happiness, ajid national greatness. If all these 
have been strengthened or augmented by the ** Reforma- 
tion," even then he must not approve of the horrible 
means ; but if they have all been weakened or lessened 
by that " Reformation," what an outrageous abuse of 
words is it to call the event by that name ! And if I do 
not prove that this latter has been the case, if I do not 
prove, clear as the day-light, that before the " Reforma- 
tion " England was greater, more wealthy, more moral, 
and more happy than she has ever been since, if I do not 
make this appear as clearly as any fact ever was made to 
appear, I will be content to pass for the rest of my life for 
a vain pretender. 

183. If I look at the county of Surrey, in which I myself 
was born, and behold the devastation of that county, I am 
filled with indignation against the ruffian devastators. 
Surrey has very little of natural wealth in it. A very con- 
siderable part of it is mere heath-land. Yet this county 
was, from one end of it to the other, ornamented and bene- 
fited by the establishments which grew out of the Catholic 
Church. At Bermondsey there was an abbey; at St. 
Mary Overy there was a priory, and this convent founded 
that very St. Thomas's Hospital which now exists in 
Southwark. This hospital also was seized by the ruffians, 
but the building was afterwards given to the City of 
London. At Newington there was a hospital, and after 
its revenues were seized the master obtained a licence to 
beg ! At Merton there was a priory. Then, going across 
to the Sussex side, there was another priory at Reigate. 
Coming again near the Thames, and more to the west, 
there was a priory at Shene. Still more to the west 
there was an abbey at Chertsey. At Tandridge there was 
a priory. Near Guildford, at Sende, there was a priory ; 
and at the lower end of the county, at Waverley, in the 
parish of Farnham, was an abbey. To these belonged 
cells and chapels at a distance from the convents them- 



138 



1 



selves ; so that it would have been a work of some diffi- 
culty for a man so to place himself, even in this poor 
heathy county, at six miles distance from a place wheie 
the door of hospitality was always open to the poor, to the 
aged, the orphan, the widow and the stranger. Can any 
man now place himself, in that whole county, within any 
number of miles of any such door ? No, nor in any othei 
county. All is wholly changed, and all is changed for the 
worse. There is now no hospitality in England. Words 
have changed their meaning. We now give entertainment 
to those who entertain us in return. We entertain people 
because we like them personally, and very seldom because 
they stand in need of entertainment. A hospital, in those 
days, meant a place of free entertainment, and not a place 
merely for the lame, the sick, and the blind ; and the very 
sound of the words " Old English Hospitality " ought to 
raise a blush on every Protestant cheek. But besides 
this hospitality exercised invariably in the monasteries, the 
weight of their example was great with all the opulent 
classes of the community, and thus to be generous and 
kind was the character of the nation at large ; a niggardly, 
a base, a money-loving disposition could not be in fashion, 
when those institutions to which all men looked with 
reverence set an example which condemned such a dispo- 
sition. 

184. And if I am asked why the thirteen monks of Wa- 
verley, for instance, should have had £ig6 13s. iid. a year 
to spend, making about ;f 4,000 a year of the money of the 
present day,^" I may answer by asking why they should not 



" The clear annual value of Waverley was ;^I74 8s. 3|d. It conse- 
quently came into the King's hands, together with the other religious 
houses with an income of less than ;,^200 yearly, in 1536. The inmates were 
transferred to other houses of the Cistercian Order, only to be again dis- 
persed on the dissolution of the greater houses three years later. On July 
20, 1536, Henry VIII. granted the site of the abbey, its buildings, and 



139 

have had it ? And I may go on and ask why anybody 
should have any property at all ? Aye, but they never 
worked ; they did nothing to increase the nation's store. 
Let us see how this is. They possessed the lands of Wa- 
verley, — a few hundred acres of very poor land, with a mill, 
and perhaps about twenty acres of very indifferent meadow 
land, on one part of which, sheltered by a semicircle of 
sand-hills, their abbey stood, the river Wey (about twenty 
feet wide) running close by the outer wall of the convent. 
Besides this they possessed the impropriated tithes of the 
parish of Farnham, and a pond or two on the commons 
adjoining. This estate in land belongs to a Mr. Thomp- 
son, who lives on the spot, and the estate in tithes to a 
Mr. Halsey, who lives at a distance from the parish. Now, 
without any disparagement to these gentlemen, did not the 
monks work as much as they do ? Did not their revenue 
go to augment the nation's store as much as the rents of 
Mr. Thompson or the tithes of Mr. Halsey ? Aye, and 
which is of vast importance, the poor of the parish of 
Farnham, having this monastery to apply to and having 
for their neighbour a bishop of Winchester who did not 
sell small beer out of his palace, stood in no need of poor 
rates, and had never heard the horrid word pauper pro- 
nounced. Come, my townsmen of Farnham ; you who as 
well as I have, when we were boys, climbed the ivy-covered 
ruins of this venerable abbey (the first of its order in Eng- 
land") ; you who as well as I have, when looking at those 

all the lands and rents belonging to it, to Sir William Fitzwilliam, the 
treasurer of his household, and afterwards Earl of Southampton. The 
grant included all corn, grain, chattels, lead, bells, &c. 

" The Cistercian Abbey of Waverley was founded on November 24, 
1 128, by William Giffard, the second bishop of Winchester after the Con- 
quest, and at that time the chancellor of King Henry I. With the assent 
of the king and the cathedral chapter of Winchester, he bestowed certain 
lands on an abbot and twelve monks, whom he brought over from the 
Cistercian abbey of Aumdne, in Normandy. 



140 

walls which have outlived the memory of the devastators, 
but not the malice of those who still taste the sweets of the 
devastation ; you who, as well as I, have many times won- 
dered what an abbey was, and how and why this one came 
to be devastated ; you shall be the judge in this matter. You 
know what poor-rates are, and you know what church-rates 
are. Very well then, there were no poor-rates and no 
church-rates as long as Waverley Abbey existed and as 
long as bishops had no wives. This is a fact wholly un- 
deniable. There was no need of either. The Church 
shared its property with the poor and the stranger, and 
left the people at large to possess their own earnings; and 
as to matters of faith and worship, look at that immense 
heap of earth round the church where your parents and 
my parents and where our progenitors for twelve hun- 
dred years lie buried ; then bear in mind that for nine 
hundred years out of the twelve they were all of the faith 
and worship of the monks of Waverley, and with that 
thought in your mind find, if you can, the heart to say that 
the monks of Waverley, by whose hospitality your fathers 
and my fathers were for so many ages preserved from bear- 
ing the hateful name of pauper, taught an idolatrous and 
damnable religion. 

185. That which took place in Surrey took place in 
every other county, only to a greater extent in proportion 
to the greater wealth and resources of the spot. Defacing 
followed closely upon the heels of confiscation and plunder. 
If buildings could have been murdered, the tyrant and his 
plunderers would have made short work of it. As it was 
they did all they could; they knocked down, they blew 
up, they annihilated as far as they could. Nothing, 
indeed, short of diabolical malice was to be expected from 
such men ; but there were two abbeys in England which 
one might have hoped that even these monsters would 
have spared, — that which contained the tomb of St. Austin, 
and that which had been founded by and contained the 



141 

remains of Alfred. We have seen how they rifled the 
tomb of St. Austin at Canterbury. They tore down the 
church and the abbey, and with the materials built a 
menagerie for wild beasts and a palace for the tyrant 
himself. The tomb of Alfred was in an abbey at Win- 
chester, founded by that king himself. ^^ The abbey and 
its estates were given by the tyrant to Wriothesley, who 
was afterwards made Earl of Southampton, and who got 
a pretty good share of the confiscations in Hampshire. 
One almost sickens at the thought of a man capable of a 
deed like the destruction of this abbey. Where is there 
one amongst us who has read any thing at all who has 
not read of the fame of Alfred ? What book can we open, 
even for our boyish days, that does not sound his praise ? 
Poets, moralists, divines, historians, philosophers, lawyers, 
legislators, not only of our own country but of all Europe, 
have cited him, and still cite him, as a model of virtue, 
piety, wisdom, valour and patriotism, as possessing every 
excellence without a single fault. He, in spite of diffi- 
culties such as no other human being on record ever 
encountered, cleared his harassed and half- barbarized 
country of horde after horde of cruel invaders, who at one 
time had wholly subdued it and compelled him, in order 
to escape destruction, to resort to the habit and the life of 
a herdsman. From this state of depression he, during 
a not long life, raised himself and his people to the highest 
point of happiness and of fame. He fought, with his 
armies and fleets, more than fifty battles against the 
enemies of England. He taught his people by his ex- 
ample as well as by his precepts, to be sober, industrious, 
brave and just. He promoted learning in all the sciences ; 
he planted the University of Oxford ; to him, and not to a 
late Scotch lawyer, belongs " Trial by Jury." Blackstone 
calls him the founder of the Common Law ; the counties, 

** This was Hyde Abbey, Winchester. 



142 



1 



the hundreds, the tithings, the courts of justice, were the 
work of Alfred. He, in fact, was the founder of all those 
rights, liberties and laws which made England to be what 
England has been, which gave her a character above that 
of other nations, which made her rich and great and 
happy beyond all her neighbours, and which still give her 
whatever she possesses of that pre-eminence. If there be m\ 
a name under heaven to which Englishmen ought to bow ■ 
with reverence approaching towards adoration it is the 
name of Alfred. And we are not unjust and ungrateful 
in this respect at any rate, for, whether Catholics or Pro- 
testants, where is there an Englishman to be found whoJ| 
would not gladly make a pilgrimage of a thousand miles 
to take off his hat at the tomb of this maker of the English 
name ? Alas ! that tomb is nowhere to be found. The 
barbarians spared not even that. It was in the abbey 
before mentioned, called Hyde Abbey, which had been 
founded by Alfred himself and intended as the place of 
his burial. Besides the remains of Alfred this abbey con- 
tained those of St. Grimbald, the Benedictine monk, whom 
Alfred brought into England to begin the teaching at 
Oxford. But what cared the plunderers for remains of 
public benefactors? The abbey was knocked down or 
blown up, the tombs were demolished, the very lead of 
the coffins was sold,^' and, which fills one with more 
indignation than all the rest, the estates were so disposed 

'■ The Abbey of Hyde was surrendered some time apparently in the 
spring of 1538. John Capon or Salcot, the last abbot, although made 
bishop of Bangor in 1534, had been allowed to remain commendatory 
abbot of the monastery, and upon his surrender of the house and revenues 
to Henry he was rewarded by a translation to the richer see of Salisbury. 
The extensive buildings, church and monastery of Hyde Abbey quickly 
disappeared. One Richard Bethel had a lease of the site for the express 
purpose of destroying them ; and so thoroughly did he do his work that a 
few years only after the dissolution, when Leland the antiquary visited the 
place, they had apparently already to a great extent vanished. 



143 

of as to make the loan-makers, the Barings, at this day the 
successors of Alfred the Great ! 

1 86. Wriothesley got the manors of Micheldever and 
Stratton, which by marriage came into the hands of the 
family of Russell ; and from that family, about thirty years 
ago, they were bought by the Barings, and are now in 
possession of Sir Thomas Baring. It is curious to observe 
how this Protestant *' Reformation " has worked. If it 
had not been there would have been no paupers at 
Micheldever and Stratton, but then the Russells would 
not have had the estates, and they could not have sold 
them to the Barings : aye, but then there would have 
been, too, no national debt as well as no paupers, and 
there would have been no loan-makers to buy the estates 
of the Russells. Besides this there would have been no 
bridewell erected upon the precise spot where the abbey 
church stood ; no tread-mill, perhaps over the very place 
where the ashes of Alfred lay ; and, what is more, there 
would have been no need of bridewell or tread-mill. It is 
related of Alfred that he made his people so honest that he 
could hang bracelets up by the way side without danger 
of their being touched. Alas ! that the descendants of 
that same people should need a tread-mill ! Aye, but in 
the days of Alfred there were no paupers, no miserable 
creatures compelled to labour from month's end to month's 
end without seeing meat, no thousands upon thousands 
made thieves by that hunger which acknowledges no law, 
human or divine. 

187. Thus then was the country devastated, sacked and 
defaced ; and I should now proceed to give an account of 
the commencement of that poverty and degradation which 
were, as I have pledged myself to show, the consequences 
of this devastation, and which I shall show, not by bare 
assertion, nor from what are called " Histories of Eng- 
land," but from Acts of Parliament, and from other 
sources, which every one can refer to, and the correctness 



144 

of which is beyond all dispute. But before we come to 
this important matter we muse see the end of the ruffian 
** Vice-gerent," and also the end of the tyrant himself, who 
was, during the events that we have been speaking of, 
going on marrying and divorcing or killing his wives, but 
whose career was, after all, not very long. 

1 88. After the death of Jane Seymour, who was the 
mother of Edward VI., and who was the only one of all 
the tyrant's wives who had the good luck to die a queen 
and to die in her bed ; — after her death, which took place 
in 1537, he was nearly two years hunting up another wife. 
None certainly but some very gross and unfeeling woman 
could be expected to have voluntarily anything to do with 
a man whose hands were continually steeped in blood. 
In 1539 he found, however, a mate in Anne, the sister of 
the Duke of Cleves. When she arrived in England he ex- 
pressed his dislike of her person ; but he found it prudent 
to marry her.^* In 1540, about six or seven months after 
the marriage, he was divorced from her, not daring in this 
case to set his myrmidons to work to bring her to the 
block. There was no lawful pretence for the divorce. 
The husband did not like his wife ; that was all, and this 
was alleged, too, as the ground of the divorce.^^ Cranmer, 

" The day after Henry had seen his new wife a council was summoned, 
and Cromwell was ordered to find some pretext to prevent the marriage. The 
Princess was required to swear that there had been no pre-engagement, 
and her suit was subjected to repeated interrogatories ; but as no reason- 
able excuse could be found the King was persuaded by Cromwell to 
submit to the ceremony of marriage (Lingard, History^ vi., p. 299). 

'^ The convocation headed by Cranmer pronounced the King's marriage 
with Anne null, on the ground that he had not given inward consent when 
publicly married (Wilkins, Concilia, iii., p. 854). The Reformer, Richard 
Hilles, writing to BuUinger from London, gives as the true reason that 
Henry was ** much taken with another young lady of very diminutive 
stature, whom he now has " ; and he adds that " no nobleman or citizen 
would have dared to utter a single word about the business, either openly 
or in secret, until they bad perceived that the King's affections were 



145 

who had divorced him from two wives before, put his irons 
into the fire again for this occasion, and produced in a 
little time as neat a piece of work as ever had come from 
the shop of the famous " Reformation." Thus the King 
and Queen were single people again ; but the former had 
another young and handsome wife in His eye. This lady's 
name was Catherine Howard, a niece of the Duke of Nor- 
folk. This Duke, as well as most of the old nobility, hated 
Cromwell, and now was an opportunity of inflicting ven- 
geance on him. Cromwell had been the chief cause of the 
King's marriage with Anne of Cleves ; but the fact is his 
plundering talent was no longer wanted, and it was con- 
venient to the tyrant to get rid of him. 

189. Cromwell had obtained enormous wealth from his 
several offices, as well as from the plunder of the Church 
and the poor. He had got about thirty of the estates 
belonging to the monasteries ; his house, or rather palace, 
was gorged with the fruits of the sacking ; he had been 
made Earl of Essex ; he had precedence over every one 
but the King ; and he, in fact, represented the King in the 
ParHament, where he introduced and defended all his con- 
fiscating and murdering laws. He had been barbarous 
beyond all description towards the unfortunate and un- 
offending monks and nuns ; without such an instrument 
the plunder never could have been effected : but he was 
no longer wanted ; the ruffian had already lived too long ; 
the very walls of the devastated convents seemed to call 
for public vengeance on his head. On the morning of the 
loth of June, 1540, he was all-powerful ; in the evening of 
the same day he was in prison as a traitor. He lay in 
prison only a few days before he had to experience the 
benefit of his own way of administering justice. He had. 



alienated from the lady Anne to that young girl, Catherine, the cousin 
of the Duke of Norfolk, whom he married immediately upon Anne's 
divorce " {Original Letters^ Parker Society, No. 105). 

10 



146 

as we have seen in the last chapter, invented a way of 
bringing people to the block or the gallows without giving 
them any form of trial, without giving them even a, hear- 
ing, but merely by passing a law to put them to death. 
This was what he had brought about in the case of the 
Countess of Salisbury ; and this was what was now to fall 
on his own head. He lived only about forty-eight days 
after his arrest ; not half long enough to enable him to 
expiate, barely to enumerate, the robberies and murders 
committed under his orders. His time seems, however, to 
have been spent, not in praying God to forgive him for 
these robberies and murders, but in praying to the tyrant 
to spare his life.^^ Perhaps of all the mean and dastardly 
wretches that ever died, this was the most mean and 
dastardly. He who had been the most insolent and cruel 
of ruffians when he had power, was now the most dis- 
gustingly slavish and base. He had, in fact, committed 
no crime against the King ; though charged with heresy 
and treason, he was no more a heretic than the King was, 
and as to the charge of treason there was not a shadow of 
foundation for it. But he was just as guilty of treason as 
the abbots of Reading, Colchester and Glastonbury, all of 
whom and many more he had been the chief instrument 
in putting to death. He put them to death in order to get 
possession of their property ; and I dare say to get at his 
property, to get the plunder back from him, was one of the 
motives for bringing him to the block." This very ruffian 
had superintended the digging up of the ashes of Thomas 
a Becket and scattering them in the air ; and now the 



'"Cranmer alone interposed at first to save the fallen minister's life, and 
wrote a letter to the King ; but a day or two later he deemed it more 
prudent to give his vote for the bill of attainder (Lingard, vi., 304). 

" A very large sum of money and a great mass of monastic treasures 
were found in his possession. Probably the total value was hardly less 
than a quarter of a million of our money {v. Gasquet, Henry VIII. and 
the English Monasteries^ i., p. 431). 



147 

people who had witnessed that had to witness the letting 
of the blood out of his dirty body, to run upon the pave- 
ment to be licked up by hogs or dogs. The cowardly 
creature seems to have had, from the moment of his 
arrest, no thought about anything but saving his life. He 
wrote repeatedly to the King in the hope of getting par- 
doned, but all to no purpose : he had done what was 
wanted of him, the work of plunder was nearly over, he 
had, too, got a large share of the plunder which it was 
not convenient to leave in his hands ; and therefore, upon 
true " Reformation " principles, it was time to take away 
his life. He in his letters to the King most vehemently 
protested his innocence. Aye, no doubt of that ; but he 
was not more innocent than were the butchered abbots 
and monks, he was not more innocent than any one out 
of those thousands upon thousands whom he had quar- 
tered, hanged, burned, or plundered ; and amongst all 
those thousands upon thousands there never was seen 
one, female or male, so complete a dastard as himself. In 
these letters to the tyrant he fawned on him in the most 
disgusting manner ; compared his smiles and frowns to 
those of God ; besought him to suffer him '' to kiss his 
balmy hand once more that the fragrance thereof might 
make him fit for heaven ! " The base creature deserved 
his death, if it had only been for writing these letters. 
Fox, the ** martyr" man, calls this Cromwell the " valiant 
soldier of the Reformation." Yes, there have been few 
soldiers to understand sacking better; he was full of 
valour on foraging parties, and when he had to rifle 
monks and nuns and to rob altars ; a brave fellow when 
he had to stretch monks and nuns on the rack to make 
them confess treasonable words or thoughts ; but when 
death began to stare him in the face he was, assuredly, 
the most cowardly caitiff that ever died. It is hardly 
necessary to say that this man is a great favourite of 
Hume, who deeply laments Cromwell's fate, though he 



148 



1 



has not a word of compassion to bestow upon all the 
thousands that had been murdered or ruined by him. 
He, as well as other historians, quotes from the conclu- 
sion of one of Cromwell's letters to the King these abject 
expressions: '* I, a most woful prisoner, am ready to sub- 
mit to death when it shall please God and your Majesty ; 
and yet the frail flesh incites me to call to your grace for 
mercy and pardon of mine offences. — Written at the Tower 
with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your High- 
ness's most miserable prisoner and poor slave, Thomas 

Cromwell. Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, 

mercy, mercy ! " That is the language of Fox's " valiant 
soldier." Fox meant valiant, not in the field or on the 
scaffold, but in the convent, pulling the rings from 
women's fingers and tearing the gold clasps from books : 
that was the Protestant valour of the ** Reformation." 
Hume says that Cromwell " deserved a better fate." 
Never was fate more just or more appropriate. He had 
been the willing, the officious, the zealous, the eager agent 
in the execution of all the tyrannical, sacrilegious, and 
bloody deeds of his master, and had amongst other things 
been the very man who first suggested the condemning of 
people to death without trial. What could be more just 
than that he should die in the same way ? Not a tear was 
shed at his death, which produced on the spectators an 
effect such as is produced when the foulest of murderers 
expiate their crimes on the gallows. 

190. During the seven years that the tyrant himself sur- 
vived this his cruel and dastardly vice-gerent, he was 
beset with disappointments, vexations, and torments of all 
sorts. He discovered at the end of a few months that 
his new queen had been, and still was, much such another 
as Anne Boleyn. He with very little ceremony sent her 
to the block, together with a whole posse of her relations, 
lovers, and cronies. He raged and foamed like a wild 
beast, passed laws most bloody to protect himself against 



I 



149 

lewdness and infidelity in his future wives, and got for his 
pains the ridicule of the nation and of all Europe. He 
for the last time took another wife ; but this time none 
would face his laws but a widow, and she very narrowly 
escaped the fate of the rest.^^ He for some years before 
he died became, from his gluttony and debaucheries, an 
unwieldy and disgusting mass of flesh, moved about by 
means of mechanical inventions. But still he retained all 
the ferocity and bloody-mindedness of his former days. 
The principal business of his life was the ordering of 
accusations, executions, and confiscations. When on his 
death-bed every one was afraid to intimate his danger to 
him, lest death to the intimator should be the consequence ; 
and he died before he was well aware of his condition, 
leaving more than one death-warrant unsigned for want of 
time.^« 

191. Thus expired, in the year 1547, in the fifty-sixth 
year of his age and the thirty-eighth of his reign, the 
most unjust, hard-hearted, meanest and most sanguinary 
tyrant that the world had ever beheld, whether Christian 
or heathen. That England which he found in peace, 
unity, plenty and happiness, he left torn by factions and 
schisms, her people wandering about in beggary and 
misery. He laid the foundations of immorality, dishonesty 
and pauperism, all which produced an abundant harvest 



'* This was Catharine Parr, widow of Lord Latimet; who with her 
brother, now created Earl of Essex in place of Cromwell, was an eager 
supporter of the reformed doctrines. Henry was married to her by Bishop 
Gardiner on July 12, 1 543. Her zeal for the Reformation nearly brought 
about her downfall, and upon her presuming to argue with her husband on 
theology, the Chancellor and the Bishop of Winchester received orders to 
prepare articles against her, but the order was countermanded (Lingard, 
History, vi., p. 351). 

'" Henry died on January 28, 1547, at two o'clock in the morning. 
Parliament was then sitting, but the secret of the King's death was kept for 
three days. 



150 

in the reigns of his unhappy, barren, mischievous and 
miserable children, with whom, at the end of a few years, 
his house and his name were extinguished for ever. How 
he disposed of the plunder of the Church and the poor ; 
how his successors completed that work of confiscation 
which he had carried on so long ; how the nation sunk in 
point of character and of wealth ; how pauperism first 
arose in England ; and how were sown the seeds of that 
system of which we now behold the effects in the im- 
poverishment and degradation of the main body of the 
people of England and Ireland ; all these will be shown in 
the next chapter, and shown, I trust, in a manner which 
will leave in the mind of every man of sense no doubt 
that, of all the scourges that ever afilicted this country, 
none is to be put in comparison with the Protestant 
«* Reformation." * 



*• This account is somewhat exaggerated. Of the King's conduct 
during his sickness very little is known for certain, and still less about his 
statements on his death-bed. One of his last acts was to order the execution 
of the Earl of Surrey, and the King's death saved the Duke of Norfolk 
from a similar fate, to which he had given his assent the night previously 
(Lingard, History^ vi., pp. 360-364). 



151 



CHAPTER VII. 

192. Having shown that the thing impudently called the 
** Reformation " was begun in hypocris}^ and perfidy, and 
cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers 
of innocent English and Irish blood, I intended to show in 
the present chapter how the main body of the people were 
by these doings impoverished and degraded up to this 
time ; that is to say, I intended to trace the impoverish- 
ment and degradation down to the end of the reign of the 
tyrant, Henry VHI. But upon reviewing my matter I 
think it best first to go through the whole of my account 
of the plunderings, persecutings and murderings of the 
" Reformation " people ; and when we have seen all the 
robberies and barbarities that they committed under the 
hypocritical pretence of religious zeal, or rather, when we 
have seen such of those robberies and barbarities as we 
can find room for, then I shall conclude with showing how 
enormously the nation lost by the change, and how that 
change made the main part of the people poor and wretched 
and degraded. By pursuing this plan I shall in one con- 
cluding chapter give, or at east endeavour to give, a clear 
and satisfactory history of this impoverishment. I shall 
take the present Protestant labourer and show him how 
his Catholic forefathers lived ; and if cold potatoes and 
water, if this poorer than pig-diet, have not quite taken 
away all the natural qualities of English blood, I shall 
make him execrate the plunderers and hypocrites by whom 



152 

was produced that change which has finally led to his 
present misery and to nine-tenths of that mass of corrup- 
tion and crime, public and private, which now threatens to 
uproot society itself. 

193. In pursuance of this plan, and in conformity with 
my promise to conclude my little work in ten chapters, I 
shall distribute my matter thus : — in chapter VII. (the 
present) the deeds and events of the reign of Edward VI . 
In chapter VIII., those of the reign of Queen Mary. In 
chapter IX., those of the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; and 
in chapter X., the facts and arguments to establish my 
main point, namely, that the thing impudently called the 
" Reformation " impoverished and degraded the main body 
of the people. In the course of the first three of these 
chapters I shall not touch, except incidentally, upon the 
impoverishing and degrading effects of the change, but 
shall reserve these for the last chapters, when, having 
witnessed the horrid means, we will take an undivided view 
of the consequences, tracing those consequences down to 
the present day. 

194. One of Henry's last acts was a will by which he 
made his infant son his immediate successor, with remain- 
der, in case he died without issue, to his daughter Mary 
first, and then in default of issue again, to his daughter 
Elizabeth, though, observe, both the daughters had been 
declared illegitimate by Act of Parliament, and though the 
latter was born of Anne Boleyn while the king's first wife, 
the mother of Mary, was alive. Parliament had given the 
king the right to determine the succession by will. 

195. To carry this will into execution, and to govern the 
kingdom until Edward, who was then ten years of age, 
should be eighteen years of age, there were sixteen execu- 
tors appointed, amongst whom was Seymour, Earl of 
Hertford, and the "honest Cranmer."^ These sixteen 

' Hertford, whilst keeping the death of the King secret, had the will in 
his private keeping. '* The fact," writes Tytler, "increases the suspicion 



153 

worthies began by taking, in the most solemn manner, an 
oath to stand to and maintain the last will of their master. 
Their second act was to break that oath by making 
Hertford, who was a brother of Jane Seymour, the King's 
mother, " protector," though the will gave equal powers to 
all the executors.^ Their next step was to give new peer- 
ages to some of themselves. The fourth, to award to the 
new peers grants of the public money. The fifth was to 
lay aside at the coronation the ancient English custom of 
asking the people if they were willing to have and obey the 
King. The sixth was "to attend at a solemn high mass."^ 
And the seventh was to begin a series of acts for the total 
subversion of all that remained of the Catholic religion in 
England, and for the effecting of all that Old Harry had 
left uneffected in the way of plunder. 

196. The monasteries were gone ; the cream had been 
taken off; but there remained the skimmed milk of church 
altars, chantries and guilds. Old Harry would doubtless, 
if he had lived much longer, have plundered these ; but he 
had not done it, and he could not do it without openly be- 
coming Protestant, which, for the reasons stated in para- 
graph loi, he would not do. But Hertford and his fifteen 
brother worthies had in their way no such obstacle as the 
ruffian king had had. The church altars, the chantries 

which hangs over this extraordinary document. They (the Earl and his 
associates) opened it before the King or the Parhanient were made ac- 
quainted with the late king's death ; they held a consultation what portions 
of this deed were proper to be communicated to the great coimcil of the 
nation " {^England under the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, i., p. 79). 

^ Before the will was made public, Hertford adopts the position of 
superior and already assumes the tone and authority of Protector, '* another 
proof that all had been privately arranged" {ibid.). On February i, 
1547, Hertford was nominated Protector by the Council, and on February 
15 was made Duke of Somerset. 

* The solemn obsequies of Henry VHI., conducted with all the usual 
Catholic rites, commenced with Vespers of the Dead on February 2. 
1547. 



154 
and the guilds contained something valuable, and they 
longed to be at it. The power of the Pope was gotten rid 
of, the country had been sacked, the poor had been 
despoiled; but still there were some pickings left. The 
piety of ages had made every church, however small, con- 
tain some gold and silver appertaining to the altar. The 
altars in the parish churches, and generally in the cathe- 
drals, had been left as yet untouched ; for though the 
wife-killer had abjured the Pope, whose power he had 
taken to himself, he still professed to be of the Catholic 
faith, and he maintained the mass and the sacraments and 
creeds with fire and faggot. Therefore he had left the 
church altars unplundered. But they contained gold, 
silver, and other valuables, and the worthies saw these with 
longing eyes and itching fingers. 

197. To seize them, however, there required a pretext, and 
what pretext could there be short of declaring at once that 
the Catholic reHgion was false and wicked, and, of course, 
that there ought to be no altars, and, of course, no gold and 
silver things appertaining to them! The sixteen worthies, 
with Hertford at their head and with Cranmer amongst 
them, had had the King crowned as a Catholic, he as well 
as they had taken the oaths as Catholics, they had sworn 
to uphold that religion, they had taken him to a high mass 
after his coronation :* but the altars had good things about 
them ; there was plunder remaining, and to get at this 
remaining plunder the Catholic religion must be wholly 
put down. There were doubtless some fanatics, some who 
imagined that the religion of nine hundred years' stand- 
ing ought not to be changed, some who had not plunder 
and plunder only in view ; but it is impossible for any man 

* Edward was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 
20, 1547. For the form used see Collier, Ecclesiastical History (ed. 1846), 
ix., p. 227, seqq. The King's oath was taken on the Blessed Sacrament, 
and after the ceremony the order says : " Then shall the King be led to his 
travers to hear the high mass.'' 



I 



155 

of common sense, of unperverted mind, to look at the 
history of this transaction, at this open avowal of Pro- 
testantism, at this change from the religion of England to 
that of a part of Germany, without being convinced that 
the principal authors of it had plunder and plunder only in 
view. 

198. The old tyrant died in 1547, and by the end of 
1549 Cranmer, who had tied so many. Protestants to the 
stake for not being Catholics, had pretty nearly completed 
a system of Protestant worship.^ He first prepared a book 
of homilies® and a catechism,' in order to pave the way. 
Next came a law to allow the clergy to have wives,® and 
then, when all things had been prepared, came the Book of 
Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments.^ 
Gardiner, who was Bishop of Winchester, reproached 
Cranmer with his duplicity, reminded him of the zeal with 
which he had upheld the Catholic worship under the late 



' "The really Protestant character of the settlement of 1549, even if it 
had been taken literally, and not with the relaxation which those who 
observed it, from Parker to Cosin, permitted themselves, has never been 
insisted upon as fully or clearly as historical accuracy demands " (A. J. 
Beresford Hope, Worship in the Church of England^ 2nd ed., p. 141). 

^ The Book of Homilies was published in July, 1547, and their reading 
enjoined on every Sunday except when a sermon was preached. 

^ The Catechism was mainly a translation of the Lutheran Catechism 
designed for Nuremberg, which Justus Jonas had turned into Latin. 
Cranmer's English version, which contained sundry additions of his own, 
was issued from the press in August, 1548. 

^ Convocation on December 18, 1547, recorded its vote for permitting 
the clergy to marry by 53 to 22 (Wilkins, Concilia, iv., p. 17). 

^ The Act of Uniformity which imposed the English Book of Common 
Prayer, was finally voted on Tuesday, January 15, 1549. Of the bishops 
ten voted for the measure and eight against it. For a discussion upon the 
character of this service-book, see Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI. and 
the Book of Common Prayer^ chapters xii., xiii. The Convocation was 
apparently not consulted in the matter of the proposed changes (see ibid.^ 
chapter x.). 



IS6 

king, and would have made him hang himself or cut- his 
throat if he had had the shghtest remains of shame in 
him. 

199. This new system did not, however, go far enough 
for the fanatics, and there instantly appeared arrayed 
against it whole tribes of new lights on the Continent ; so 
that Cranmer, cunning as he was, soon found that he had 
undertaken no easy matter. The proclamations put forth 
upon this occasion were disgustingly ridiculous, coming as 
they did in the name of a king only ten years of age, and ex- 
pressed in words so solemnly pompous and full of arrogance. 
However, the chief object was the plunder, and to get at 
this nothing was spared. There were other things to 
attract the grasp, but it will be unnecessary to dwell very 
particularly on anything but the altars and the churches. 
This was the real " reformation reign," for it was a reign 
of robbery and hypocrisy without anything to be compared 
with them, — anything in any country or in any age. 
Religion, conscience, was always the pretext ; but in one 
way or another robbery, plunder, was always the end. 
The people, once so united and so happy, became divided 
into innumerable sects, no man knowing hardly what to 
believe, and, indeed, no one knowing what it was lawful 
for him to say, for it soon became impossible for the 
common people to know what was heresy and what was 
not heresy. 

200. That prince of hypocrites, Cranmer, who, during 
the reign of Henry had condemned people to the flames 
for not believing in transubstantiation, was now ready to 
condemn them for believing in it. We have seen that 
Luther was the beginner of the work of " reformation," 
but he was soon followed by further reformers on the 
Continent. These had made many attempts to propagate 
their doctrines in England, but old Henry had kept them 
down. Now, however, when the churches were to be 
robbed of what remained in them, and when, to have 



'57 

pretext for that robbery, it was necessar}^ to make a com- 
plete change in the form of worship, these sectarians all 
flocked to England, which became one great scene of reli- 
gious disputation. Some were for the Common Prayer- 
Book, others proposed alterations in it, others were for 
abolishing it altogether ; and there now began that divi- 
sion, that multiplicity of hostile opinions, which has con- 
tinued to the present day. Cranmer employed a part of 
the resources of the country to feed and fatten those of 
these religious, or rather impious, adventurers who sided 
with him and who chose the best market for their doc- 
trines. England was overrun by these foreign traders in 
religion, and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence, 
was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only to 
foreigners but to foreigners of the most base and infamous 
character and description. Cranmer could not find Eng- 
lishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in executing the 
work that he had in hand. The Protector, Hertford, 
whom we must now call Somerset (the child-king having 
made him Duke of Somerset), was the greatest of all 
" reformers " that had yet appeared in the world, and, as 
we shall soon see, the greatest and most audacious of all 
the plunderers that this infamous reformation has pro- 
duced, save and except Henry himself. The total aboli- 
tion of the CathoHc worship was necessary to his projects 
of plunder, and therefore he was a great encourager of 
these greedy and villainous foreigners. 

20I. The consequences to the morals of the people were 
such as were naturally to be expected. All historians 
agree that vice of all sorts and crimes of every kind were 
never so great and so numerous before. This was con- 
fessed by the teachers themselves, and yet the Protestants 
have extolled this reign as the reign of conscience and 
religion !^° It was so manifest that the change was a bad 

'" Lingard {History^ vi., p. 107), after pointing out the poverty and 
discontent which could be traced to these changes, adds :— •* Nor were the 



IS8 



one, that men could not have proceeded in it from error 
Its mischiefs were all manifest before the death of the 
tyrant ; that death afforded an opportunity for returning 
into the right path, but there was plunder remaining, and 
the plunderers went on. The " Reformation " was not 
the work of virtue, of fanaticism, of error, of ambition, but 
of a love of plunder. This was its great animating prin- 
ciple ; in this it began, and in this it proceeded till there 
v/as nothing left for it to work on. 

202. Henry had, in certain cases, enabled his minions 
to rob the bishoprics, but now there was a grand sweep at 
them. The Protector took the lead, and his example was 
followed by others. They took so much from one, so 
much from another, and some they wholly suppressed, as 
that of Westminster, and took their estates to themselves.-" 
There were many chantries (private property to all intents 
and purposes), free chapels (also private property), alms- 
houses, hospitals, guilds or fraternities, the property of 
which was as much private property as the funds of any 



national morals improved, if we may judge from the portraits drawn by the 
most eminent of the reformed preachers. They assert that the sufferings 
of the indigent were viewed with indifference by the hard-heartedness of 
the rich ; that in pursuit of gain the most bare-faced frauds were avowed 
and justified ; that robbers and murderers escaped punishment by the par- 
tiality of juries and the corruption of judges ; that church livings were 
given to laymen or converted to the use of patrons ; that marriages were 
repeatedly dissolved by private authority, and that the haunts of prostitu- 
tion were multiplied beyond measure." 

After warning the reader that perhaps these pulpit declamations may 
not be the best evidence, the historian concludes that there is ample 
evidence *' that the change of religious polity, by removing many of the 
former restraints on vice and enervating the authority of the spiritual 
courts, had given a bolder front to licentiousness, and opened a wider 
scope to the indulgence of criminal passion." 

" For example, the temporalities of the see of Exeter in the reign ot 
Henry VIII. amounted to ;^i,566 14s. 6d. per annum, and by the 5th of 
Edward VI. they had been reduced to £421 (Rymer, xv., 282-289). 



1 



159 

friendly society now are.*'' All these became lawful 
plunder. And yet there are men who pretend that what 
is now possessed by the Established Church is of so sacred 
a nature as not to be touched by Act of Parliament ! This 
was the reign in which this our present Established 
Church was founded, for though the fabric was overset by 
Mary it was raised again by Elizabeth. Now it was that 
it was made. It was made, and the new worship along 
with it, by Acts of Parliament. It had its very birth 
in division, disunion, discord, and its life has been worthy 
of its birth. The property it possesses was taken nomi- 
nally from the Catholic Church, but in reality from that 
Church, and also from the widow, the orphan, the indigent 
and the stranger. The pretext for making it was th^t it 
would cause a union of sentiment amongst the people, 
that it would compose all dissensions. The truth, the 
obvious truth, that there could be but one true religion, 
was acknowledged and loudly proclaimed, and it was not 
to be denied that there were already twenty, the teachers 
of every one of which declared that all the others were 
false, and, of course, that they were, at the very least, no 
better than no religion at all. Indeed, this is the language 
of common sense, though it is now so fashionable to 
disclaim the doctrine of exclusive salvation. 

I ask the Unitarian parson or prater, for instance, why 
he takes upon him that office ; why he does not go and 
follow some trade, or why he does not work in the fields. 
His answer is that he is more usefully employed in teach- 
ing. If I ask of what use his teaching is, he tells me, he 

Winchester, which had been ;^3,885 3s. 3|d. under the successor of 
Gardiner, was only ;^l,333 6s. 8d. The richer bishoprics had their 
revenues reduced about two-thirds, the others about one half (see Lingard, 
History, vol. vii., 3rd ed., note^ p. 146). 

•■•^Dodd {Church History, i., p. 348) says the free chapels and chantries 
dissolved by this Act (i Edward VI., c. 14) were " 2,374, all endowed with 
lands, pensions and moveable goods to an immense value." 



i6o 

must tell me, that his teaching is necessary to the salvation 
of souls. Well, say I, but why not leave that business to 
the Established Church, to which the people all pay tithes ? 
Oh no, says he, I cannot do that, because the Church does 
not teach the true religion. Well, say I, but true or false, 
if it serve for salvation, what signifies it ? Here I have 
him penned up in a corner. He is compelled to confess 
that he is a fellow wanting to lead an easy life by pander- 
ing to the passions or whims of conceited persons, or to 
insist that his sort of belief and teaching are absolutely 
necessary to salvation ; as he will not confess the former 
he is obliged to insist on the latter, and here, after all his 
railing against the intolerance of the Catholics, he main- 
tains the doctrine of exclusive salvation. 

203. Two true religions, two true creeds, differing from 
each other, contradicting each other, present us with an 
impossibility ; what then are we to think of twenty or 
forty creeds, each differing from all the rest ? If deism 
or atheism be something not only wicked in itself, but so 
mischievous in its effects as to call— in case of the public 
profession of it — for imprisonment* for years and years, if 
this be the case, what are we to think of laws, the same 
laws too which inflict that cruel punishment, tolerating and 
encouraging a multiplicity of creeds, all but one of which 
must be false ? A code of laws acknowledging and tolerat- 
ing but one religion is consistent in punishing the deist 
and the atheist, but if it acknowledge or tolerate more than 
one it acknowledges or tolerates one false one, and let 
divines say whether a false religion is not as bad as deism 
or atheism ? Besides, is it just to punish the deist or the 
atheist for not believing in the Christian religion at all, 
when he sees the law tolerate so many religions, all but 
one of which must be false ? What is the natural effect 
of men seeing constantly before their eyes a score or two 
of different sects, all calling themselves Christians, all 
tolerated by the law, and each openly declaring that all 



I6i 

the rest are false ? The natural, the necessary effect is, 
that many men will believe that none of them have truth 
on their side, and of course that the thing is false alto- 
gether, and invented solely for the benefit of those who 
teach it and who dispute about it. 

204. The law should acknowledge and tolerate but one 
religion, or it should know nothing at all about the matter. 
The Catholic code was consistent. It said that there was 
but one true religion, and it punished as offenders those 
who dared openly to profess any opinion contrary to that 
religion. Whether that were the true religion or not we 
have not now to inquire ; but while its long continuance — 
and in so many nations too — was a strong presumptive 
proof of its good moral effects upon the people, the dis- 
agreement amongst the Protestants was and is a presump- 
tive proof not less strong of its truth. If, as I observed 
upon a former occasion, there be forty persons who — and 
whose fathers for countless generations — have up to this 
day entertained a certain belief, and if thirty-nine of these 
say at last that this belief is erroneous, we may naturally 
enough suppose, or at least we may think it possible, that 
the truth so long hidden is, though late, come to light. 
But if the thirty-nine begin, aye, and instantly begin, to 
entertain, instead of the one old belief, thirty-nine new 
beliefs, each differing from all the other thirty-eight, must 
we not in common justice decide that the old belief must 
have been the true one ? What ! shall we hear these 
thirty-nine protestors against the ancient faith each pro- 
testing against all the other thirty-eight, and still believe 
that their joint protest was just ? Thirty-eight of them 
must now be in error ; this must be : and are we still to 
believe in the correctness of their former decision, and that, 
too, relating to the same identical matter ? If in a trial 
relating to the dimensions of a piece of land, which had 
been proved to have always been, time without mind, 
taken for twenty acres, there were one surveyor to swear 
II 



l62 

that it contained twenty acres, and each of thirty-nine 
other surveyors to swear each of the other number of acres 
between one and forty, what judge and jury would hesitate 
a moment in crediting him who swore to the twenty, and 
in wholly rejecting the testimony of all the rest ? 

205. Thus the argument would stand on the supposition 
that thirty-nine parts out of forty of all Christendom had 
protested ; but there were not, and there are not even unto 
this day, two parts out of fifty. So that here we have 
thirty-nine persons breaking off from about two thousand, 
protesting against the faith which the whole, and their 
fathers, have held ; we have each of these thirty-nine 
instantly protesting that all the other thirty-eight have 
protested upon false grounds; and yet we are to believe 
that their joint protest against the faith of the two 
thousand, who are backed by all antiquity, was wise and 
just ! Is this the way in which we decide in other cases ? 
Did honest men, and men not blinded by passion or by 
some base motive, ever decide thus before ? Besides, if 
the Catholic faith were so false as it is by some pretended 
to be, how comes it not to have been extirpated before 
now ? When, indeed, the Pope had very great power, 
when even kings were compelled to bend to him, it might 
be said, and pretty fairly said, that no one dared use the 
weapons of reason against the Catholic faith. But we 
have seen the Pope a prisoner in a foreign land ; we have 
seen him without scarcely food and raiment ; and we have 
seen the press of more than half the world at liberty to 
treat him and his faith as it pleased to treat them. But 
have we not seen the Protestant sects at work for three 
hundred years to destroy the CathoHc faith ? Do we not 
see, at the end of those three hundred years, that that 
faith is still the reigning faith of Christendom ? Nay, do 
we not see that it is gaining ground at this very moment, 
even in this kingdom itself, where a Protestant hierarchy 
receives eight millions sterhng a year, and where Catholics 



1^3 

were rigidly excluded from all honour and power and, in 
some cases, from all political and civil rights under a 
constitution founded by their Catholic ancestors ? Can it 
be then that this faith is false ? Can it be that this wor- 
ship is idolatrous ? Can it be that it was necessary to 
abolish them in England as far as law could do it ? Can 
it be that it was for our good, our honour, to sack our 
country, to violate all the rights of property, to deluge the 
country with blood, in order to change our religion ? 

206. But in returning now to the works of the plun- 
derers, we ought to remark that, in discussions of this 
sort, it is a common but a very great error to keep our eyes 
so exclusively fixed on mere matters of religion. The 
Catholic Church included in it a great deal more than the 
business of teaching religion and of practising worship and 
administering sacraments. It had a great deal to do with 
the temporal concerns of the people. It provided, and 
amply provided, for all the wants of the poor and dis- 
tressed. It received back, in many instances, what the 
miser and extortioner had taken unfairly, and applied it to 
works of beneficence. It contained a great body of land 
proprietors whose revenues were distributed in various 
ways amongst the people at large, upon terms always 
singularly advantageous to the latter. It was a great and 
powerful estate, independent both of the aristocracy and 
the crown, and naturally siding with the people. But 
above all things, it was a provider for the poor and a 
keeper of hospitality. By its charity and by its benevo- 
lence towards its tenants and dependants, it mitigated the 
rigour of proprietorship, and held society together by the 
ties of reHgion rather than by the trammels and terrors of 
the law. It was the great cause of that description of 
tenants called life-holders, who formed a most important 
link in the chain of society, coming after the proprietors 
in fee and before the tenant at will, participating, in some 
degree, of the proprietorship of the estate, and yet, not 



i64 

wholly without dependence on the proprietor." This race 
of persons, formerly so numerous in England, has by 
degrees become almost wholly extinct, their place having 
been supplied by a comparatively few rack-renters and by 
swarms of miserable paupers. The Catholic Church held 
the lending of money for interest, or gain, to be directly 
in the face of the Gospel. It considered all such gain as 
usurious and, of course, criminal. It taught the making 
of loans without interest ; and thus it prevented the 
greedy-minded from amassing wealth in that way in 
which wealth is most easily amassed. Usury amongst 
Christians was wholly unknown, until the wife-killing 
tyrant had laid his hands on the property of the Church 
and the poor. The principles of the Catholic Church all 
partook of generosity ; it was their great characteristic, as 
selfishness is the characteristic of that Church which was 
established in its stead. 

207. The plunder which remained after the seizure of 
the monasteries was comparatively small; but still, the 
very leavings of the old tyranny, the mere gleanings of 
the harvest of plunder, were something ; and these were 
not suffered to remain. The plunder of the churches, 
parochial as well as collegiate, was preceded by all sorts 
of antics played in those churches. Calvin had got an 
influence opposed to that of Cranmer ; so that there was 
almost open war amongst these Protestants, which party 



''^Lingard ^History, vi., p. 107) says : "Within the realm poverty and 
discontent generally prevailed. The extension of enclosures, and the new 
practice of letting lands at rack rents, had driven from their homes 
numerous families, whose fathers had occupied the same farms for several 
generations, and the increasing multitudes of the poor began to resort to 
the more populous towns in search of that relief which had been formerly 
distributed at the gates of the monasteries. Thus Lever exclaims : ' O 
merciful Lord ; what a number of poor, feeble, halt, blind, lame, sickly, 
yea, with idle vagabonds and dissembling caitiffs mixed among them, lie 
and creep, begging in the many streets of London and Westminster. ' " 



i65 

should have the teaching of the people. After due pre- 
paration in this way, the robbery was set about in due 
form. Every church altar had, as I have before observed, 
more or less of gold and silver. A part consisted of 
images, a part of censers, candlesticks, and other things 
used in the celebration of the mass. The mass was, 
therefore, abolished, and there was no longer to be an 
altar, but a table in its stead. The fanatical part of the 
reformers amused themselves with quarrelling about the 
part of the church where the table was to stand, about 
the shape of it, and whether the head of it was to be 
placed to the north, the east, the west, or the south, and 
whether the people were to stand, kneel, or sit at it ! The 
plunderers, however, thought about other things : they 
thought about the value of the images, censers, and the 
like. 

208. To reconcile the people to these innovations the 
plunderers had a Bible contrived for the purpose, which 
Bible was a perversion of the original text wherever it was 
found to be necessary. Of all the acts of this hypocritical 
and plundering reign this was, perhaps, the basest. In it 
we see the true character of the heroes of the " Protestant 
Reformation " ; and the poor and miserable labourers of 
England, who now live upon potatoes and water, feel the 
consequences of the deeds of the infamous times of which 
I am speaking. Every preparation being made the rob- 
bery began, and a general plunder of churches took place 
by royal and parliamentary authority ! The robbers took 
away everything valuable, even down to the vestments of 
the priests. Such mean rapacity never was heard of 
before, and for the honour of human nature let us hope 
that it will never be heard of again. It seems that Eng- 
land was really become a den of thieves, and of thieves, 
too, of the lowest and most despicable character. 

209. The Protector, Somerset, did not forget himself. 
Having plundered four or five of the bishoprics he needed 



i66 

a palace in Londbn. For the purpose of building this 
palace, which was erected in the Strand, London, and 
which was called " Somerset House," as the place is 
called to this day, he took from three bishops their town 
houses. He pulled these down, together with a parish 
church, in order to get a suitable spot for the erection. 
The materials of these demolished buildings being insuf- 
ficient for his purpose, he pulled down a part of the build- 
ings appertaining to the then cathedral of Saint Paul; 
the church of Saint John, near Smithfield; Barking 
chapel, near the Tower; the college church of Saint 
Martin-le-Grand; St. Ewen's church, Newgate ; and the 
parish church of Saint Nicholas. He, besides these, 
ordered the pulling down of the parish church of Saint 
Margaret, Westminster ; but, says Dr. Heylyn, ** the 
workmen had no sooner advanced their scaftolds when the 
parishioners gathered together in great multitudes with 
bows and arrows and staves and clubs, which so terrified 
the workmen that they ran away in great amazement, 
and never could be brought again upon that employ- 
ment." " Thus arose Somerset House, the present grand 
seat of the power of fiscal grasping. It was first erected 
literally with the ruins of churches, and it now serves, 
under its old name, as the place from which issue the 
mandates to us to give up the fruit of our earnings to pay 
the interest of a debt which is one of the evident and 
great consequences of the '* Protestant Reformation," 
without which that debt never could have existed. 

2IO. I am, in the last chapter, to give an account of the 
impoverishment and degradation that these and former 
Protestant proceedings produced amongst the people at 
large ; but I must here notice that the people heartily 
detested these Protestant tyrants and their acts. General 
discontent prevailed, and this, in some cases, broke out 

»* Eccksia Restaurata^ Edward VI., p. 72. 



i67 

into open insurrection. It is curious enough to observe 
the excuses that Hume, in giving an account of these 
times, attempts to make for the plunderers and their 
"reformation." It was his constant aim to blacken the 
Catholic institutions, and particularly the character and 
conduct of the Catholic clergy. Yet he could not pass 
over these discontents and risings of the people ; and, as 
there must have been a cause for these, he is under the 
necessity of ascribing them to the badness of the change, 
or to find out some other cause. He therefore goes to 
work in a very elaborate manner to make his readers 
believe that the people were in error as to the tendency 
of the change. He says that " scarce any institution can 
be imagined less favourable, in the main, to the interests 
of mankind," than that of the Catholic ; yet, says he, " as 
it was followed by many good effects, which had ceased 
with the suppression of the monasteries, that suppression 
was very much regretted by the people." He then pro- 
ceeds to describe the many benefits of the monastic in- 
stitutions ; says that the monks, always residing on their 
estates, caused a diffusion of good constantly around 
them ; that, '* not having equal motives to avarice with 
other men, they were the best and most indulgent land- 
lords"; that, when the church lands became private pro- 
perty, the rents were raised, the money spent at a distance 
from the estates, and the tenants exposed to the rapacity 
of stewards ; that whole estates were laid waste ; that the 
tenants were expelled, and that even the cottagers were 
deprived of the commons on which they formerly fed their 
cattle ; that a great decay of the people, as well as a 
diminution of former plenty, was remarked in the king- 
dom ; that at the same time the coin had been debased 
by Henry, and was now further debased ; that the good 
C3in was hoarded or exported; that the common people 
were thus robbed of part of their wages ; that " complaints 
were heard in every part of the kingdom." 



i68 

211. Well, was not this change a bad one then? And 
what are the excuses which are oifered for it by this 
calumniator of the Catholic institutions? Why, he says 
that "their hospitality and charity gave encouragement to 
idleness and prevented the increase of public wealth ; " 
and that, •* as it was by an addition alone of toil that the 
people were able to live, this increase of industry was 
at last the effect of the present situation, an effect very 
beneficial to society.'* What does he mean by "the 
present situation ? " The situation of the country, I sup- 
pose, at the time when he wrote ; and though the "Refor- 
mation " had not then produced pauperism and misery and 
debt and taxes equal to the present, it was on the way to 
do it. But what does he mean by " public riches ? " The 
Catholic institutions "provided against the pressure of 
want amongst the people, but prevented the increase of 
' public riches ! * " What, again I ask, is the meaning of 
the words " public riches ? " What is, or ought to be, the 
end of all government and of every institution ? Why, the 
happiness of the people. But this man seems, like Adam 
Smith, and indeed Hke almost every Scotch writer, to have 
a notion that there may be great pubHc good though pro- 
ducing individual misery. They seem always to regard 
the people as so many cattle working for an indescribable 
something that they call " the public." The question with 
them is not whether the people, for whose good all govern- 
ment is instituted, be well off or wretched, but whether the 
" public " gain or lose money or money's worth. I am able 
to show, and 1 shall show, that England was a greater 
country before the " Reformation " than since ; that it was 
greater positively and relatively ; that its real wealth was 
greater. But what we have at present to observe is that, 
thus far at any rate, the Reformation had produced general 
misery amongst the common people, and that accordingly 
complaints were heard from one end of the kingdom to the 
other. 



169 

212. The Book of Common Prayer was to put an end to 
all dissensions ; but its promulgation and the consequent 
robbery of the churches were followed by open insurrection 
in many of the counties, by battles, and executions by 
martial law. The whole kingdom was in commotion, but 
particularly, to the great honour of those counties, in 
Devonshire and Norfolk. In the former county the insur- 
gents were superior in force to the hired troops and had 
besieged Exeter- Lord Russell was sent against them, 
and at last, reinforced by German troops, he defeated them, 
executed many by martial law, and most gallantly hanged 
a priest on the top of the tower of his church !^^ This, I 
suppose, Mr. Brougham reckons amongst those services 
of the family of Russell which he tells us England can 
never repay ! In Norfolk the insurrection was still more 
formidable, but was finally suppressed by the aid of foreign 
troops, and was also followed by the most barbarous execu- 
tions. The people of Devonshire complained of the altera- 
tions in reHgion, " that," as Dr. Heylyn (a Protestant 
divine) expresses it, *' the free-born commonalty was op- 
pressed by a small number of gentry, who glutted them- 
selves with pleasures, while the poor commons, wasted by 
daily labour like pack-horses, live in extreme slavery ; and 
that holy rites established by antiquity were abolished and 
a new form of reHgion obtruded ; "^^ and they demanded 
that the mass and a part of the monasteries should be 
restored, and that priests should not be allowed to marry. 



'^ The foreign troops were chiefly German mercenaries, but there were 
also some Italians under Malatesta and Baptista Spinoli. " Most of the 
raskal rabble were executed by martial law, and the vicar of St. Thomas, 
one of the principal incendiaries, was hanged on the top of his own tower, 
apparalled in his popish weeds, with his beads at his girdle " (Heylyn, 
History of the Reformaiioit^ ed. 1670, p. 76). For the orders of Lord Grey 
for the execution of other priests on the steeples of their own parish 
churches, see Calendar of State Papers^ Domestic^ p. 20, No. 32. 

•• Heylyn, ut sup.., p. 77. 



I/O 

Similar were the complaints and the demands everywhere 
else; but Cranmer's Prayer Book and the Church "by law 
established," backed by foreign bayonets, finally triumphed, 
at least for the present, and during the remainder of this 
hypocritical, base, corrupt and tyrannical reign. 

213. Thus arose the Protestant Church as by law estab- 
lished. Here we see its origin. Thus it was that it 
commenced its career. How different, alas ! from the 
commencement of that Church of England which arose 
under St. Austin at Canterbury, which had been cherished 
so carefully by Alfred the Great, and under the wings of 
which the people of England had for nine hundred years 
seen their country the greatest in the world, and had them- 
selves lived in ease and plenty and real freedom, superior 
to those of all other nations ! " 

214. Somerset, who had brought his own brother to the 
block in 1549, chiefly because he had opposed himself to 
his usurpations (though both were plunderers), was, not 
long after the commission of the above cruelties on the 
people, destined to come to that block himself. Dudley, 
Earl of Warwick, who was his rival in baseness and in- 
justice and his superior in talent, had out-intrigued him 
in the Council ; and at last he brought him to that end 
which he so well merited. On what grounds this was 
done is wholly uninteresting. It was a set of most wicked 
men circumventing and, if necessary, destroying each 
other ; but it is worthy of remark that amongst the crimes 
alleged against this great culprit was his having brought 
foreign troops into the kingdom ! This was, to be sure, 
rather ungrateful in the pious reformers, for it was those 
troops that established for them their new religion. But 
it was good to see them putting their leader to death, 
actually cutting oif his head, for having caused their pro- 
jects to succeed. It was, in plain words, a dispute about 
the plunder. Somerset had got more than his brother 
plunderers deemed his share. He was building a palace 



171 

for himself, and if each pkinderer could have had a palace 
it would have been peace amongst them ; but as this could 
not be the rest called him a " traitor," and as the King, 
the Protestant Edward, had signed the death-warrant of 
one uncle at the instigation of another uncle, he now signed 
the death-warrant of that other, he himself being even 
now only fifteen years of age ! " " 

215. Warwick, who was now become Protector, was 
made Duke of Northumberland, and got granted to him 
the immense estates of that ancient house, which had 
fallen into the hands of the crown. This was, if possible, 
a more zealous Protestant than the last Protector ; that is 
to say, still more profligate, rapacious and cruel. The 
work of plundering the Church went on until there re- 
mained scarcely anything worthy of the name of clergy. 
Many parishes were in all parts of the kingdom united in 
one, and having but one priest amongst them. But in- 
deed there were hardly any persons left worthy of the 
name of clergy. 

216. The King, who was a poor sickly lad, seems to have 
had no distinctive characteristic except that of hatred to 
the Catholics and their religion, in which hatred Cranmer 
and others had brought him up. His life was not likely to 
be long, and Northumberland, who was now his keeper, 
conceived the project of getting the crown into his own 
family, a project quite worthy of a hero of the " Reforma- 
tion." In order to carry this project into effect, he mar- 
ried one of his sons, Lord Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane 
Grey, who, next after Mary and Elizabeth and Mary 
Queen of Scotland, was heiress to the throne.^® Having 
done this, he got Edward to make a will settling the crown 
on this Lady Jane, to the exclusion of his two sisters. The 
advocates of the " Reformation," who of course praise this 

" Somerset was executed January 22, 1552. 

,'• Lady Jane Grey was the granddaughter of Mary, sister to Henry VIII. 



1/2 

boy -king, in whose reign the new Church was invented, 

tell us long stories about the way in which Northumberland 
persuaded Edward to do this act of injustice ; but in all 
probability there is not a word of truth in the story. How- 
ever, what they say is this : that Lady Jane was a sincere 
Protestant, that the young King knew this, and that his 
anxiety for the security of the Protestant religion induced 
him to consent to Northumberland's proposition. 

217. The settlement met with great difficulty when it 
came to be laid before the lawyers, who somehow or other 
always contrived to keep their heads out of the halter. 
Even Henry's judges used, when hard pressed, to refer 
him to the Parliament for the committing of violations of 
law. The judges, the lord chancellor, the secretaries of 
state, the privy council, all were afraid to put their names 
to this transfer of the crown. The thing was, however, at 
last accomplished, and with the signature of Cranmer to it; 
though he, as one of the late king's executors, and the first 
upon that list, had sworn in the most solemn manner to 
maintain his will, according to which will the two sisters, 
in case of no issue by the brother, were to succeed that 
'brother on the throne. Thus, in addition to his fourth act 
of notorious perjury, this maker of the Book of Common 
Prayer became clearly guilty of high treason.^* He now 
at last, in spite of all his craft, had woven his own halter, 
and that, too, beyond all doubt for the purpose of preserving 
his bishopric. The Princess Mary was next heir to the 
throne. He had divorced her mother, he had been the 
principal agent in that unjust and most wicked transac- 
tion ; and besides, he knew that Mary was immovably a 
Catholic, and that of course her accession must be the 



'" The judges, when asked to draw up the deed of settlement, had in- 
formed the lords of the council that such an instrument would subject both 
those who had drawn it and those who advised it to the punishment pC 
traitors. 



173 

death of his office and his Church. Therefore he now com- 
mitted the greatest crime known to the laws, and that, too, 
from the basest of motives.^ 

218. The King having made this settlement, and being 
kept wholly in the hands of Northumberland, who had 
placed his creatures about him, would naturally, as was 
said at the time, n«t live long ! In short, he died on the 
6th of July, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age and the 
seventh of his reign, expiring on the same day of the year 
that his father had brought Sir Thomas More to the 
block.^^ These were seven of the most miserable and 
most inglorious years that England had ever known. 
Fanaticism and roguery, hypocrisy and plunder, divided 
the country between them. The people. were wretched 
beyond all description ; from the plenty of Catholic times 
they had been reduced to general beggary ; and then, in 
order to repress this beggary, laws the most ferocious 
were passed to prevent even starving creatures from ask- 
ing alms. Abroad as well as at home the nation sunk in 
the eyes of the world. The town of Boulogne in France, 
which had been won by Catholic Englishmen, the base 
Protestant rulers now, from sheer cowardice, surrendered ; 
and from one end of Europe to the other were heard jeer- 
ing and scoffing at this formerly great and lofty nation. 
Hume, who finds goodness in every one who was hostile 
to the Catholic institutions, says : " All English historians 
dwell with pleasure on the excellencies of this young King, 

^ Cranmer, in his letter to Queen Mary, confesses that he acted against 
his judgment and conscience (Strype, Cranmer^ App., No. 74). 

^^ It was reported at the time that Edward had died from poison ad- 
ministered to him by Northumberland, or in his interests (^Original Letters^ 
ed. Parker Society, Nos. 182, 325). The opinion that Edward had been 
removed to make way for Queen Jane was so general that the Emperor 
wrote to Queen Mary that she ought to put to death all conspirators who 
had any hand in " the death " of the late king [cf. Lingard, History^ vi,, 
p. 116, note\. 



174 

whom the flattering promises of hope, joined to many real 
virtues, had made an object of the most tender affections 
of the public. He possessed mildness of disposition, a 
capacity to learn and to judge, and attachment to equity 
and justice." Of his mildness we have, I suppose, a proof 
in his assenting to the burning of several Protestants who 
did not protest in his way ; in his signing of the death- 
warrants of his two uncles, and in his wish to bring his 
sister Mary to trial for not conforming to what she deemed 
blasphemy, and from doing which he was deterred only by 
the menaces of the Emperor, her cousin. So much for his 
mildness. As for his justice, who can doubt of that who 
thinks of his will to disinherit his two sisters, even after 
the judges had unanimously declared to him that it was 
contrary to law ? The " tender affection " that the people 
had for him was, doubtless, evinced by their rising in 
insurrection against his ordinances from one end of the 
kingdom to the other, and by their demanding the restora- 
tion of that religion which all his acts tended wholly to 
extirpate. But besides these internal proofs of the false- 
hoods of Hume's description. Dr. Heylyn, who is, at least, 
one of " all the English historians," and one, too, whom 
Hume himself refers to no less than twenty-four times in 
the part of his history relating to this very reign, does not 
*' dwell with pleasure on the excellencies of this young 
prince," of whom he, in the fourth paragraph of his pre- 
face, speaks thus : " King Edward, whose death I cannot 
reckon for an infelicity to the Church of England, for, 
being ill-principled in himself and easily inclined to em- 
brace such counsels as were offered him, it is not to be 
thought but that the rest of the bishoprics (before sufH- 
ciently impoverished) would have followed that of Durham, 
and the poor church be left as destitute as when she came 
into the world in her natural nakedness." ^2 Aye, but this 



"^ Heylyn, History of the Reformation^ To the Reader, p. 4 (2nd 
edition, 1670). 



175 

was his great merit in the eyes of Hume. He should have 
said so then, and should have left his good character of 
tyrant in the egg to rest on his own opinion, and not have 
said that '' all English historians dwelt with pleasure on 
his excellencies." 

219. The settlement of the crown had been kept a 
secret from the people, and so was the death of the King, 
for three whole days. In the meanwhile Northumberland, 
seeing the death of the young King approaching, had, 
in conjunction, observe, with Cranmer and the rest of his 
council, ordered the two princesses to come near to 
London, under pretence that they might be at hand 
to comfort their brother, but with the real design of 
putting them into prison the moment the breath should 
be out of his body. Traitors, foul conspirators, villains of 
all descriptions have this in common, that they, when 
necessary to their own interest, are always ready to betray 
each other. Thus it happened here ; for the Earl of 
Arundel, who was one of the council, and who went with 
Dudley and others on the tenth of July to kneel before 
Lady Jane as Queen, had in the night of the sixth sent a 
secret messenger to Mary, who was no farther off than 
Hoddesdon, informing her of the death of her brother and 
of the whole plot against her. Thus warned she set off 
on horseback, accompanied by only a few servants, to 
Kenninghall, in Norfolk, whence she proceeded to Fram- 
lingham, in Suffolk, and thence issued her commands to 
the council to proclaim her as their sovereign, hinting at 
but not positively accusing them with their treasonable 
designs.^® They had on the day before proclaimed Lady 
Jane to be Queen ! They had taken all sorts of precautions 
to ensure their success : army, fleet, treasure, all the powers 
of government were in their hands. They therefore re- 



2^ Foxe, Acts and Monuments^ ed. Townsend, vi., p. 38$. Mary's 
letter is dated July 9, 1553. 



176 

turned her a most insolent answer, and commanded her to 
submit, as a dutiful subject, to the lawful queen ; at the 
bottom of which command Cranmer's name stood first.^ 

220. Honesty and sincerity exult to contemplate the 
misgivings which, in a few hours afterwards, seized this 
band of almost unparalleled villains. The nobility and 
gentry had instantly flocked to the standard of Mary; 
and the people, even in London, who were most infected 
with the pestiferous principles of the foreign miscreants 
that had been brought from the continent to teach them 
the new religion, had native honesty enough left to make 
them disapprove of this last and most daring of robberies.^^ 
Ridley, the Protestant bishop of London, preached at St. 
Paul's to the Lord Mayor and a numerous assemblage 
for the purpose of persuading them to take part against 
Mary, but it was seen that he preached in vain.^^ North- 
umberland himself marched from London on the 13th of 
July to attack the Queen. But in a few days she was 
surrounded by twenty or thirty thousand men, all volun- 
teers in her cause and refusing pay. Before Northumber- 
land reached Bury St. Edmunds he began to despair; he 
marched to Cambridge and wrote to his brother conspira- 
tors for reinforcements. Amongst these dismay first, and 
then perfidy, began to appear. In a few days these men, 
who had been so audacious and who had sworn solemnly 
to uphold the cause of Qaeen Jane, sent Northumberland 

^* Foxe, Ac/s and Monuments, ed. Townsend, vi., p. 386. 

''^ Burnet says : " There were a very few that shouted with the acclama- 
tions ordinary on such occasions " {sc. the proclamation of a sovereign). 
History, ii., p. 380. 

^ This was on Sunday, July 16, 1553. He maintained that both 
daughters of Henry VIII. were illegitimate, and consequently excluded 
from the succession. He declared that Mary was a bigot, and that he had 
in vain tried to withdraw her from the errors of popery. He conjured 
those who valued the pure light of the Gospel to support Lady Jane {cf, 
Lin^jard, vi., p. iiS). 



177 

an order to disband his army, while they themselves 
proclaimed Queen Mary amidst the unbounded applause 
of the people.*^^ 

221. The master-plotter had disbanded his army, or 
rather, it had deserted him, before the order of the council 
reached him. This was the age of ** reformation " and of 
baseness. Seeing himself abandoned, he, by the advice of 
Dr. Sands, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, who only 
four days before had preached against Mary, went to the 
market-place of Cambridge and proclaimed her Queen, 
"tossing," says Stowe, "his cap into the air in token of 
his joy and satisfaction." In a few hours afterwards he 
was arrested by the Queen's order, and that, too, by his 
brother-conspirator the Earl of Arundel, who had been 
one of the very first to kneel before Lady Jane ! No reign, 
no age, no country ever witnessed rapacity, hypocrisy, 
meanness, baseness, perfidy such as England witnessed in 
those who were the destroyers of the Catholic and 
founders of the Protestant Church. This Dudley, who 
had for years been a plunderer of the Church, who had 
been a promoter of every ruffian-like measure against those 
who had adhered to the religion of his fathers ; who had 
caused a transfer of the crown because, as he alleged, the 
accession of Mary would endanger the Protestant religion ; 
this very man, when he came to receive justice on the 
block, confessed his belief in the Catholic faith ; and which 
is more, exhorted the nation to return to it. He, according 
to Dr. He5dyn (a Protestant, mind), exhorted them *' to 
stand to the religion of their ancestors, rejecting that of 
later date, which had occasioned all the misery of the fore- 
going thirty years; and that if they desired to present 
their souls unspotted before God, and were truly affected 



'" A writer at the time says : "Jane was only queen for nine days, and 
those most turbulent ones '* {Original Letters^ ed. Parker Society, No. 
182). 

12 



178 

to their country, they should expel the preachers of the 
reformed religion. For himself," he said, '* being blinded 
by ambition, he had made a rack of his conscience by tem- 
porising, and so acknowledged the justice of his sentence." 
Fox, author of the lying Book of Martyrs^ of whose lies we 
shall see more by-and-by, asserts that Dudley made this 
confession in consequence of a promise of pardon. But 
when he came on the scaffold he knew that he was not to 
be pardoned ; and besides, he himself expressly declared the 
contrary at his execution, and told the people that he had 
not been moved by anyone to make it, and had not done it 
from any hope of saving his life. However, we have yet 
to see Cranmer himself recant, and to see the whole band 
of Protestant plunderers on their knees before the Pope's 
legate, confessing their sins of heresy and sacrilege and 
receiving absolution for their offences ! 

222. Thus ended this reign of '' reformation," plunder, 
wretchedness and disgrace. Three times the form of the 
new worship was changed, and yet those who adhered to 
the old worship or who went beyond the new worship 
were punished with the utmost severity. The nation 
became every day more and more despised abroad and 
more and more distracted and miserable at home. The 
Church ** as by law established " arose and was enforced 
under two protectors or chief ministers, both of whom 
deservedly suffered death as traitors. Its principal author 
was a man who had sent both Protestants and Catholics 
to the stake; who had burnt people for adhering to the 
Pope, others for not believing in transubstantiation, others 
for believing in it, and who now burnt others for disbe- 
lieving in it for reasons different from his own ; a man 
who now openly professed to disbelieve in that for not 
believing in which he had burnt many of his fellow-crea- 
tures, and who after this most solemnly declared that 
his own belief was that of these very persons ! As this 
Church " by law established " advanced, all the remains 



179 

of Christian charity vanished before it. The indigent, 
whom the Catholic Church had so tenderly gathered under 
her wings, were now, merely for asking alms, branded with 
red-hot irons and made slaves, though no provision was 
made to prevent them from perishing with hunger and 
cold; and England, so long famed as the land of hospitality, 
generosity, ease, plenty, and security to person and pro- 
perty, became under a Protestant Church a scene of 
repulsive selfishness, of pack-horse toil, of pinching want, 
and of rapacity and plunder and tyranny that made the 
very names of law and justice a mockery. 



i6o 



CHAPTER VIII. 

223. We are now entering upon that reign the punisn^ 
nients inflicted during which have furnished such a handle 
to the calumniators of the Catholic Church, who have left 
no art untried to exaggerate those punishments in the 
first place, and in the second place to ascribe them to 
the Catholic religion, keeping out of sight all the while 
the thousand times greater mass of cruelty occasioned by 
Protestants in this kingdom. Of all cruelties I disapprove. 
I disapprove also of all corporal and pecuniary punish- 
ments on the score of religion. Far be it from me, there- 
fore, to defend all the punishments inflicted on this score 
in the reign of Queen Mary; but it will be my duty to 
show, first, that the mass of punishment then inflicted on 
this account has been monstrously exaggerated ; secondly, 
that the circumstances under which they were inflicted 
found more apology for their severity than the circum- 
stances under which the Protestant punishments were 
inflicted ; thirdly, that they were in amount as a single 
grain of wheat is to a whole bushel, compared with the 
mass of punishments under the Protestant Church " as 
by law established;" lastly, that be they what they might, 
it is a base perversion of reason to ascribe them to the 
principles of the Catholic religion; and that as to the 
Queen herself, she was one of the most virtuous of human 
beings, and was rendered miserable, not by her own dis- 
position or misdeeds, but by the misfortune and misery 



i8i 

entailed on her by her two immediate predecessors, who 
had uprooted the institutions of the country, who had 
plunged the kingdom into confusion, and who had left no 
choice but that of making severe examples, or of being an 
encourager of and a participator in heresy, plunder, and 
sacrilege. Her reign our deceivers have taught us to call 
the reign of " Bloody Queen Mary, " while they have 
taught us to call that of her sister the " Golden Days of 
Good Queen Bess." They have taken good care never 
to tell us that for every drop of blood that Mary shed 
Elizabeth shed a pint ; that the former gave up every 
fragment of the plunder of which the deeds of her prede- 
cessors had put her in possession, and that the latter 
resumed this plunder again, and took from the poor every 
pittance which had by oversight been left them ; that the 
former never changed her religion, and that the latter 
changed from Catholic to Protestant, then to Catholic 
again, and then 'back again to Protestant ; that the former 
punished people for departing from that religion in which 
she and they and their fathers had been born, and to 
which she had always adhered ; and that the latter 
punished people for not departing from the religion of her 
and their fathers, and which rehgion, too, she herself 
professed and openly lived in even at the time of her 
coronation. Yet we have been taught to call the former 
"bloody" and the latter "good!" How have we been 
deceived ! And is it not time, then, that this deception, 
so injurious to our Catholic fellow-subjects and so debasing 
to ourselves, should cease ? It is perhaps too much to 
hope that I shall be able to make it cease ; but towards 
accomplishing this great and most desirable object I shall 
do something at any rate, by a plain and true account of 
the principal transactions of the reign of Mary. 

224. The Queen, who, as we have seen in paragraph 219, 
was at Framlingham, in Suffolk, immediately set off for 
London, where, having been greeted on the road with the 



82 



1 



strongest demonstrations of joy at her accession,* she 
arrived on the 31st of July, 1553. As she appioached 
London the throngs thickened ; EHzabeth, who had kept 
cautiously silent while the issue was uncertain, went out 
to meet her, and the two sisters, riding on horseback, 
entered the city, the houses being decorated, the streets 
strewed with flowers, and the people dressed in their 
gayest clothes.* She was crowned soon afterwards, in the 
most splendid manner and after the Catholic ritual, by 
Gardiner, who had, as we have seen, opposed Cranmer's 
new Church, and whom she found a prisoner in the 
Tower,^ he having been deprived of his bishopric of 
Winchester, but whom we are to see on.e of the great 
actors in restoring the Catholic religion. The joy of the 
people was boundless. It was a coronation of greater 
splendour and more universal joy than ever had before 
been witnessed. This is agreed on all hands. And this 
fact gives the lie to Hume, who would "have us believe 
that the people did not like the Queen's principles. This 
fact has reason on its side as well as historical authority, 
for was it not natural that the people, who only three 
years before had actually risen in insurrection in all parts 
of the kingdom against the new Church and its authors, 
should be half mad with joy at the accession of a queen* 

' In Norfolk, where she was, the people '* received and hailed her as 
Queen. Almost the entire nation rise to her assistance " {Original 
Letters, No. 182). 

2 "The sam day (July 31) rod thrugh London my lade Elssabeth to 
Algatt, and so to the qwen's grace her sester, with a 1000 hors and a 100 
velvett cotes " {Mackyn's Diary ^ ed. Camden Society, p. 38). The two 
sisters seemed to have returned through London, the streets of which were 
gay with banners, on the third of August [ibid.), 

^ Bishop Gardiner was liberated from the Tower on August 9. Bishop 
Bonner had been set free from the Marshalsea prison, in which he was 
confined, on the 4th of the month. 

* Foxe even declares " God so turned the hearts of the people to her, 
and against the council, that she overcame them without bloodshed, not- 



I 



i83 

who they were sure would put down that Church, and put 
down those who had quelled them by the aid of German 
troops ? 

225. Mary began her reign by acts the most just and 
beneficent. Generously disregarding herself, her ease and 
her means of splendour, she abolished the debased currency 
which her father had introduced and her brother had madfe 
still baser ; she paid the debts due by the Crown, and she 
largely remitted taxes at the same time. But that which 
she had most at heart was the restoration of that religion 
under the influence of which the kingdom had been so 
happy and so great for so many ages, and since the aboli- 
tion of which it had known nothing but discord, disgrace 
and misery. There were in her way great obstacles, for 
though the pernicious principles of the German and Dutch 
and Swiss reformers had not even yet made much progress 
amongst the people, except in London, which was the 
grand scene of the operations of those hungry and 
fanatical adventurers, there were the plunderers to deal 
with, and these plunderers had power. It is easy to 
imagine — which, indeed, was the undoubted fact— that the 
English people, who had risen in insurrection in all parts 
of the kingdom against Cranmer's new Church, who had 
demanded the restoration of the mass and of part, at least, 
of the monasteries, and who had been silenced only by 
German bayonets and halters and gibbets, following 
martial law ; it is easy to imagine that this same people 
would, in only three years afterwards, hail with joy inde- 
scribable the prospect of seeing the new Church put down 
and the ancient one restored, and that, too, under a queen 



withstanding there was made great expedition against her both by sea and 
land." . . . "Mary increased in puissance, the heaVts of the people 
being mightily bent unto her," and " the common multitude did withdraw 
their hearts from them (the supporters of Lady Jane Orey) to stand ^v-ir 
her "( Acis and Monuments y ed. Townsend, vi., p. 38S), 



i84 

on whose constancy and piety and integrity they could so 
firmly rely. But the plunder had been so immense, the 
plunderers were so numerous, they were so powerful, and 
there were so few men of family of any account who had 
not participated in deeds one way or another hostile to the 
CathoHc Church, that the enterprise of the Queen was full 
of difficulty. As to Cranmer's Church " by law estab- 
lished," that was easily disposed of. The gold and silver 
and cups and candlesticks and other things, of which the 
altar-robbers of young King Edward's reign had despoiled 
the churches, could not indeed be restored, but the altars 
themselves could and speedily were ; and the tables which 
had been put in their stead and the married priests along 
with them were soon seen no longer to offend the eyes of 
the people. It is curious to observe how tender-hearted 
Hume is upon this subject. He says, '' Could any notion 
of law, justice or reason be attended to where superstition 
predominates, the priests would never have been expelled 
for their past marriages, which at that time were permitted 
by the laws of the kingdom." I wonder why it never 
occurred to him to observe that monks and nuns ought not 
then to have been expelled ! Were not their institutions 
" permitted by the laws of the kingdom ? " Aye, and had 
been permitted by those laws for nine hundred years, and 
guaranteed, too, by Magna Charta. He applauds the 
expelling of them ; but this " new thing," though only of 
three years and a half standing, and though " established " 
under a boy-king who was under two protectors, each of 
whom was justly beheaded for high treason, and under a 
council who were all conspirators against the lawful 
sovereign, — these married priests, the most of whom had, 
like Luther, Cranmer, Knox, Hooper, and other great 
'* Reformers," broken their vows of celibacy, and were of 
course perjurers ; no law was to be repealed, however 
contrary to public good such law might be, if the repeal 
injured the interests of such men as these ! The Queen had, 



i85 

however, too much justice to think thus, and these apos- 
tates were expelled, to the great joy of the people, many of 
whom had been sabred by German troops because they 
demanded, amongst other things, that priests might not be 
permitted to marry. The Catholic bishops who had been 
turned out by Cranmer were restored, and his new bishops 
were of course turned out. Cranmer himself was in a short 
time deprived of his ill-gotten see and was in prison, and 
most justly, as a traitor. The mass was in all parts of the 
country once more celebrated, the people were no longer 
burnt with red-hot irons and made slaves merely for asking 
alms, and they began to hope that England would be 
England again, and that hospitality and charity would 
return. 

226. But there were the plunderers to deal with ! And 
now we are about to witness a scene which, were not its 
existence so well attested, must pass for the wildest of 
romance. What ? That Parliament, who had declared 
Cranmer's divorce of Catherine to be lawful, and who 
had enacted that Mary was a bastard, acknowledge that 
same Mary to be the lawful heir to the throne ! ^ That 
Parliament, which had abolished the Catholic worship 
and created the Protestant worship on the ground that the 
former was idolatrous and damnable and the latter agree- 
able to the will of God, aboHsh the latter and restore the 
former ! What ? Do these things ? and that, too, with- 
out any force, without being compelled to do them ? 
No, not exactly so ; for it had the people to fear, a vast 
majority of whom were cordially with the Queen so far as 
related to these matters, respecting which it is surprising 
what dispatch was made. The late king died only in 
July, and before the end of the next November all the 

* In declaring that Henry and Catherine were lawfully married, Par- 
liament pronounced that the union with Anne was invalid, and Elizabeth 
consequently illegitimate. This decision was never reversed, even when 
Elizabeth came to the throne. 



i86 

work of Cranmer, as to the divorce as well as to the 
worship, was completely overset, and that, too, by Acts 
of the very Parliament who had confirmed the one and 
'* established " the other. The first of these Acts declared 
that Henry and Catherine had been lawfully married, and 
it laid all the blame on Cranmer by name ! * The second 
Act called the Protestant Church *' as by law estab- 
lished" a *' new thing imagined by a few singular opin- 
ions," though the Parliament, when it established it, 
asserted it to have come from '* the Holy Ghost." ^ What 
was now said of it was true enough ; but it might have 
been added, established by German bayonets. The great 
inventor, Cranmer, who was at last in a fair way of receiv- 
ing the just reward of his numerous misdeeds, could only 
hear of the overthrow of his work ; for having, though 
clearly as guilty of high treason as Dudley himself, been 
as yet only confined to his palace at Lambeth, and hearing 
that mass had been celebrated in his cathedral church at 
Canterbury, he put forth a most inflammatory and abusive 
declaration (which, mind, he afterwards recanted), for 
which declaration, as well as for his treason, he was 
committed to the Tower, where he lay at the time when 
these Acts were passed.® But the new Church required 

" I Mary, sess. 2, cap. i, declared the Queen's highness to have been 
born in most just and lawful matrimony, and repealed all acts and sen- 
tences of divorce to the contrary. " Against this bill, though it was equiva- 
lent to a statute of bastardy in respect to Elizabeth, not a voice was raised 
in either house of Parliament" (Lingard, History^ vii., p. 140). 

' Lingard, ut supra. It restored the services to what they were ** in 
the last year of the reign of our late sovereign lord King Henry VIII." 
The acts establishing the first and second Books of Common Prayer, the 
new Ordinal, and the administration of the Sacrament in both kinds, the 
authorising the marriages of priests and legitimating their children, those 
abolishing certain feasts and fasts, giving the appointment of bishops to 
the king, and the regulation of episcopal jurisdiction, were repealed. 

' Hume, History (Murray's Reprint), ii., 285. The Archbishop asserted 
that the mass was the device of the father of lies; that it was not he, the Arch- 



i87 

no law to abolish it. It was, in fact, abolished by the 
general feeling of the nation ; ® and, as we shall see in 
the next chapter, it required rivers of blood to re-establish 
it in the reign of Elizabeth. Hume, following Fox, com- 
plains bitterly of ** the court," for ** its contempt of the 
laws in celebrating before the two Houses, at the opening 
of the Parliament, a mass of Latin, with all the ancient 
rites and ceremonies, though abolished by Act of Parlia- 
ment." Abolished ! Why, so had Cromwell and his 
canting crew abolished the kingly government by Act of 
Parliament and by the bayonet, and yet this did not induce 
Charles to wait for a repeal before he called himself king. 
Nor did the bringers-over of the " deliverer " William wait 
for an Act of Parliament to authorise them to introduce the 
said " deliverer.' The " new thing " fell of itself. It had 
been forced upon the people and they hated it. 

227. But when the question came, whether the Parlia- 
ment should restore the Papal Supremacy, the plunder 
was at stake ; for to take the Church property was sacrilege, 
and if the Pope regained his power in the kingdom he 
might insist on restitution. The greater part of this 
property had been seized on eighteen years before. In 
many cases it had been divided and subdivided, in 
many the original grantees were dead. The common 

bishop, but a false, flattering, lying and deceitful monk who had restored 
the ancient worship at Canterbury ; that he had never offered to say mass 
before the Queen, but was willing to show that it contained many horrible 
blasphemies, &c. {cf. Lingard, History^ vi., p. 136). 

^ Hooper, writing in the reign of Henry VIII. to Bullinger, confesses 
that the English as a nation are Catholic, and cling to Catholic practices 
and belief. " The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, 
the invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious abstinence from 
meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in greater 
esteem than at the present moment " {Original Letters, Parker Society, 
No. 21). Hume, ut sup., p. 286, allows that the numbers still at heart 
Catholic on the accession of Mary secured the election of a Parliament 
ready to solicit reconciliation with Rome. 



i88 

people, too, had in many cases become dependants on the 
new proprietors ; and besides, they could not so easily 
trace their connexion between their faith and that su- 
premacy, as they could between their faith and the mass 
and the sacraments. The Queen, therefore, though she 
most anxiously wished to avoid giving in any way whatever 
her sanction to the plunder, was reduced to the necessity 
of risking a civil war for the Pope's supremacy, to leave 
her kingdom unreconciled to the Church, and to keep to 
herself the title of Head of the Church, to her so hateful, 
or to make a compromise with the plunderers. She was 
induced to prefer the latter ; though it is by no means 
certain that civil war would not have been better for the 
country, even if it had ended in the triumph of the plun- 
derers, which, in all human probability, it would not. But 
observe in how forlorn a state as to this question she was 
placed. There was scarcely a nobleman or gentleman of 
any note in her kingdom who had not in one way or 
another soiled his hands with the plunder.^*^ The Catholic 
bishops, all but Fisher, had assented to the abolition of the 
Pope's supremacy. Bishop Gardiner, who was now her 
High Chancellor, was one of these, though he had been 
deprived of his bishopric and imprisoned in the Tower 
because he opposed Cranmer's further projects. These 
Catholic bishops, and Gardiner especially, must naturally 
wish to get over this matter as quietly as possible ; for how 
was he to advise the Queen to risk a civil war for the 
restoration of that the abolition of which he had so fully 
assented to and so strenuously supported ? And how was 
she to do anything without councillors of some sort ? 

'" " If the spoils of the Church had been at first confined to a few 
favourites and purchasers, they were now become by sales and bequests 
divided and subdivided among thousands ; and almost every family of 
opulence in the kingdom had reason to deprecate a measure which, accord- 
ing to the general opinion, would induce the compulsive surrender of the 
whole or a part of its possessions" (Lingard, History^ vi., p. I39). 



i89 

228. Nevertheless the Queen, whose zeal was equal to 
her sincerity, was bent on the restoration, and therefore 
a compromise with the plunderers was adopted." Now 
then it was fully proved to all the world, and now this 
plundered nation, who had been reduced to the greatest 
misery by what had been impudently called the " Refor- 
mation," saw, as clearly as they saw the light of day, that 
all those who had abetted the *' Reformation," that all the 
railings against the Pope, that all the accusations against 
the monks and nuns, that all the pretences of abuses in 
the Catholic Church, that all the confiscations, sackings 
and bloodshed, that all these, from first to last, had 
proceeded from the love of plunder; for now the two 
Houses of Parliament, who had, only about three or four 
years before, established Cranmer's Church and declared 
it to be ** the work of the Holy Ghost," now these pious 
'' Reformation " men, having first made a firm bargain to 
keep the plunder, confessed (to use the words even of 
Hume) that they had been guilty of a most horrible defec- 
tion from the true Church, professed their sincere repent- 
ance for their past transgressions, and declared their 
resolution to repeal all laws enacted in prejudice of the 
Pope's authority ! "^^ Are the people of England aware of 
this ? No, not one man out of fifty thousand. These, let 
it be remembered, were the men who made the Protestant 
religion in England ! 

229. But this is a matter of too much importance to be 
dismissed without the mention of some particulars. The 
Queen had not about her one single man of any eminence 

'^ Those who had " shared the plunder of the Church would never con- 
sent to the restoration of that jurisdiction which might call in question 
their right to their present possessions. Hence Gardiner saw that it was 
necessary, in the first place, to free them from apprehension, and for that 
purpose to procure from the Pontiff a bull confirming all past alienation of 
the property of the Church " (Lingard, History^ vii., p. 175). 

^'^ History, ii., 298. 



190 

who had not in some degree departed from the straight 
path during one or the other, or both, of the two last 
reigns. But there was Cardinal Pole, of whom and of 
the butchery of whose aged and brave mother we have 
seen an account in paragraph 115. He still remained 
on the Continent, but now he could with safety return to 
his native country, on which the fame of his talents and 
virtues reflected so much honour. The Cardinal was ap- 
pointed by the Pope to be his legate or representative in 
England. The Queen had been married on the 25th of 
July, 1554, to Philip, Prince of Spain, son and heir of the 
Emperor Charles V., of which marriage I shall speak 
more fully by-and-by. 

230. In November, the same year, a Parliament was 
called, and was opened with a most splendid procession of 
the two Houses, closed by the King and Queen, the first 
on horseback, the last in a litter, dressed in robes of 
purple. Their first Act was a repeal of the attainder of 
Pole, passed in the reign of the cruel Henry VIII." 
While this was going on, many noblemen and gentlemen 
had gone to Brussels to conduct Pole to England ; and it 
is worth observing that amongst these was that Sir 
William Cecil who was afterwards so bitter and cruel an 
enemy of the Catholics and their religion in the reign of 
Elizabeth. Pole was received at Dover with every demon- 
stration of public joy and exultation, and before he reached 
Gravesend, where he took water for Westminster, the 
gentlemen of the country had flocked to his train to the 
number of nearly two thousand horsemen. Here is a fact 
which, amongst thousands of others, shows what the 
populousness and opulence of England then were." 



"Parliament met on November 12, 1554, and on the 21st the bill for the 
repeal of the act of attainder was passed, and received the royal assent the 
next day. 

" Lingard, History ^ vii., p. 177. 



191 

231. On the 2gth of November the two Houses pe- 
titioned the King and Queen. In this petition they 
expressed their deep regret at having been guilty of 
defection from the Church, and prayed their Majesties, 
who had not participated in the sin, to intercede with the 
Holy Father, the Pope, for their forgiveness and for their 
re-admission into the fold of Christ. The next day, the 
Queen being seated on the throne, having the King on her 
left and Pole, the Pope's legate, on her right, the Lord 
High Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, read the petition. 
The King and Queen then spoke to Pole, and he, at the 
close of a long speech, gave, in the name of the Pope, to 
the two Houses and to the whole nation, absolution in 
the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, at which 
words the members of the two Houses, being on their 
knees, made the hall resound with Amen !^® 

232. Thus was England once more a Catholic country. 
She was restored to the "fold of Christ;" but the fold had 
been plundered of its hospitality and charity, and the 
plunderers before they pronounced the " amen " had taken 
care that the plunder should not be restored. The Pope 
had hesitated to consent to this ;^* Cardinal Pole, who was 
a man full of justice, had hesitated still longer ; but, as we 
have seen before, Gardiner, who was now the Queen's 
prime minister, and indeed all her council were for the 

'^For the bull of Pope Julius III., giving Pole power to re-unite Eng- 
land to Rome, and the form of absolution, see Wilkins' Concilia, iv., p. 
91 and p. III. The motion for reunion was carried in Parliament almost 
by acclamation. The House of Lords were unanimous in its favour, and 
in the Commons, out of 300 members, only two demurred, and even these 
the second day desisted from opposition (Lingard, History, vii., p. 178-179). 

*" Pole, by the bull of Pope Julius, was empowered "to give, alienate 
and transfer" to the present possessors property taken from the Church in 
the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Cardinal Morone in writing 
about this tells Pole that all who had been consulted thought that under 
the circumstances alienation was lawful, and hopes that this would end hl<; 
(Pole's) scruples (Lingard, Hisloiy^ vii., p. 176). 



192 



■ 



compromise, and therefore these "amen" people, while 
they confessed that they had sinned by that defection, in 
virtue of which defection, and of that alone, they got the 
property of the Church and the poor, while they prayed 
for absolution for that sin, while they rose from their knees 
to join the Queen in singing Te Deum i'n thanksgiving for 
that absolution, while they were doing these things they 
enacted that all the holders of Church property should 
keep it, and that any person who should attempt to molest 
or disturb them therein should be guilty of praemunire and 
be punished accordingly ! " 

233. It doubtless went to the heart of the Queen to 
assent to this act, which was the very worst deed of her 
whole reign, the monstrously exaggerated fires of Smith- 
field not excepted. We have seen how she was situated as 
to her councillors, and particularly as to Gardiner, who, 
besides being a most zealous and active minister, was a man 
of the greatest talents. We have seen that there was 
scarcely a man of any note who had not first or last par- 
taken of the plunder ; but still, great as her difficulty 
certainly was, she would have done better to follow the 
dictates of her own mind, insisting upon doing what was 
right and leaving the consequences to God, as she had so 
nobly done when Cranmer and the rest of the base council 
of Edward VI. commanded her to desist from hearing mass 
and most cruelly took her chaplains from her.^^ 

234. However, she was resolved to keep none of the 
plunder herself. Henry, as " Head of the Church," had 

" This was included in the Act which passed in the Commons to restore 
the papal supremacy and canon law, and "the whole system of religious 
polity which had prevailed for so many centuries before Henry VIII." 
\cf. Collier, vi., pp. 96-98). 

'^ Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, vi., pp. 7-21. A series 
of letters between the Princess Mary and the Council. On August 19, 
1551, Mary wrote to the king that she had already told him " rather than 
you should constrain me to leave mass, to take away my life " (p. 21). 



I 



193 

taken to himself the tenths and first fruits, that is to say, 
the tenth part of the annual worth of each church benefice 
and the first whole year's income of each. These had of 
course been kept by King Edward. Then there were some 
of the Church estates, some of the hospitals and other 
things, and these amounting to a large sum altogether, that 
still belonged to the Crown, and of which the Queen was of 
course the possessor. In November, 1555, she gave up to 
the Church the tenths and first fruits, which, together with 
the tithes, which her two immediate predecessors had 
seized on and kept, were worth about ;^63,ooo a year in 
money of that day, and were equal to about a million a 
year of our present money ! Have we ever heard of any 
other sovereign doing the like ? ^^ *' Good Queen Bess " 
we shall find taking them back again to herself ; and though 
we shall find Queen Anne giving them up to the Church, 
we are to bear in mind that in Mary's days the Crown 
and its officers, ambassadors, judges, pensioners and all 
employed by it, were supported out of the landed estate of 
the Crown itself, the remains of which estate we now see 
in the pitiful rest of " Crown-lands." Taxes were never in 
those days called for but for wars and other really national 
purposes, and Mary was queen two years and a-half before 
she imposed upon her people a single farthing of tax in 
any shape whatever !^° So that this act of surrendering the 
tenths and first fruits was the effect of her generosity and 
piety ; and of hers alone, too, for it was done against the 
remonstrances of her council, and it was not without great 
opposition that the bill passed in Parliament, where it was 
naturally feared that this just act of the Queen would 
awaken the people's hatred of the plunderers.^^ But the 



" Lingard, History^ vii., p. 212. 
2« November, 1555. 

'^' In the Lords the bill passed with only two dissentient voices, but in 
the Commons it was carried only by 193 to 126 (Lingard, p. 215). In 

13 



194 

Queen persevered, saying that she would be " Defender of 
the Faith " in reality and not merely in name. This was 
the woman whom we have been taught to call *' the Bloody 
Queen Mary " ! 

235. The Queen did not stop here, but proceeded to 
restore all the church and abbey lands which were in 
her possession, being, whatever might be the consequence 
to her, firmly resolved not to be a possessor of the plunder. 
Having called some members of her council together she 
declared her resolution to them, and bade them prepare an 
account of those lands and possessions, that she might 
know what measures to adopt for the putting of her inten- 
tion in execution. Her intention was to apply the revenues, 
as nearly as possible, to their ancient purposes. She 
began with Westminster Abbey, which had, in the year 
1610, been the site of a church immediately after the intro- 
duction of Christianity by St. Austin, which church had 
been destroyed by the Danes, and in 958 restored by King 
Edgar and St. Dunstan, who placed twelve Benedictine 
monks in it, and which became, under Edward the Con- 
fessor, in 1049, a noble and richly endowed abbey, which, 
when plundered and suppressed by Henry, had revenues 
to the amount of ;f3,977 a year of good old rent in money 
of that day, and therefore equal to about eighty thousand 
pounds a year of money of this day ! Little of this, how- 
ever, remained in all probability to the Queen, the estates 
having in great part been parcelled out amongst the 
plunderers of the two last reigns. But whatever there 
remained to her she restored, and Westminster Abbey 
once more saw a convent of Benedictine monks within its 



answer to the objections of her ministers that the money was needed to 
support the dignity of the Crown, Mary replied that "she set more by the 
salvation of her soul than by ten such crowns" {ibid.y p. 213). In conse- 
quence of this Pole gave orders that the exaction of first fruits should cease, 
and that the patronage of rectories, &c., previously vested in the Crown, 
should revert to the bishops of the respective dioceses. 



195 

walls. She next restored the Friary at Greenwich, to 
which had belonged friars Peyto and Elstow, whom we 
have seen in paragraphs 8i and 82 so nobly pleading 
before the tyrant's face the cause of her injured mother, 
for which they had felt the fury of that ferocious tyrant. 
She re-established the Black Friars in London. She 
restored the Nunnery at Sion, near Brentford, on the spot 
where Sion House now stands. At Sheen she restored 
the Priory. She restored and liberally endowed the 
Hospital of St. John, Smithfield.^ She re-established the 
hospital in the Savoy for the benefit of the poor, and 
allotted to it a suitable yearly revenue out of her own 
purse ; and as her example would naturally have great 
effect, it is, as Dr. Heylyn (a Protestant and a great enemy 
of her memory) observes, " hard to say how far the nobility 
and gentry might have done the like if the queen had 
lived for some few years longer."'*' 

236. These acts were so laudable, so unequivocally good, 
so clearly the effect of justice, generosity, and charity in 
the Queen, that coming before us as they do in company 
with great zeal for the Catholic religion, we are naturally 
curious to hear what remarks they bring from the unfeel- 
ing and mahgnant Hume. Of her own free will, and even 
against the wish of very powerful men, she gave up in this 
way a yearly revenue of probably not less than a million 
and a half of pounds of our present money. And for what ? 
Because she held it unjustly ; because it was plunder ; be- 
cause it had been taken to the Crown in violation of Magna 
Charta and all the laws and usages of the realm ; because 
she hoped to be able to make a beginning in the restoring 
of that hospitality and charity which her predecessors had 
banished from the land ; and because her conscience, as 
she herself declared, forbade her to retain these ill-gotten 

" Lingard, History^ vii., pp. 215, 216. 
" Ecclesia Restaurata^ Queen Mary, p. 67. 



196 



1 



possessions, valuing, as she did (she told her council), 
" her conscience more than ten kingdoms." Was there ever 
a more praiseworthy act ? And were there ever motives 
more excellent ? Yet Hume, who exults in the act which 
the plunderers insisted on to secure their plunder, calls 
this noble act of the Queen an '* impudent " one, and 
ascribes it solely to the influence of the new Pope, who, he 
tells us, told her ambassadors that the English would 
never have the doors of Paradise opened to them unless 
the whole of the Church property was restored. How 
false this is, in spite of Hume's authorities, is clear from 
this undeniable fact, namely, that she gave the tenths and 
first fruits to the bishops and priests of the Church in 
England, and not to the Pope, to whom they were formerly 
paid. This, therefore, is a malignant misrepresentation. 
Then again, he says that the Pope's remonstrances on this 
score had "little influence with the nation." With the 
plunderers, he means ; for he has been obliged to confess 
that in all parts of the country the people, in Edward's 
reign, demanded a restoration of a part of the monasteries ; 
and is it not clear, then, that they must have greatly 
rejoiced to see their sovereign make a beginning in that 
restoration? But it was his business to lessen as much 
as possible the merit of these generous and pious acts 
of this basely calumniated queen. 

237. Events soon proved to this just and good but 
singularly unfortunate queen, that she would have done 
better to risk a civil war against the plunderers than 
assent to the Act of Parliament by which was secured to 
them the quiet possession of their plunder. Her generous 
example had no eflect upon them, but on the contrary 
made them dislike her, because it exposed them to odium, 
presenting a contrast with their own conduct so much to 
their disadvantage. From this cause more than from any 
other arose those troubles which harassed her during the 
remainder of her short reign. 



197 

238. She had not been many months on the throne 
before a rebelHon was raised against her, instigated by 
the " Reformation " preachers who had bawled in favour 
of Lady Jane Grey, but who now discovered, amongst 
other things, that it was contrary to God's word to be 
governed by a woman. The fighting rebels were defeated 
and the leaders executed, and at the same time the Lady 
Jane herself, who had been convicted of high treason, who 
had been kept in prison, but whose life had hitherto been 
spared, and would evidently still have been spared if it had 
not manifestly tended to keep alive the hopes of the traitors 
and disaffected.^* And as this queen has been called *' the 
bloody," is another instance to be found of so much lenity 
shown towards one who had been guilty of treason to the 
extent of actually proclaiming herself the sovereign ? There 
was another rebellion afterwards, which was quelled in like 
manner, and was followed by the execution of the principal 
traitors, who had been abetted by a Protestant faction in 
France if not by the government of that country, which 
was bitterly hostile towards the Queen on account of her 
marriage with Philip, the Prince of Spain, which marriage 
became a great subject of invective and false accusation 
with the Protestants and disaffected of all sorts.^ 

239. The Parliament, almost immediately after her ac- 
cession, advised her to marry, but not to marry a foreigner. 
How strangely our taste is changed! The English had 
always a deep-rooted prejudice against foreigners, till, for 
pure love of the Protestant religion, they looked out for and 



** Lingard, History, vii., pp. 161-162, 

'^ Lingard, «/ JM/)., p. 157. "Wyatt made a sedition in Kent for the 
purpose of thwarting the marriage " (Sanders, The Anglican Schism, ed. 
Lewis, p. 223). Collier (^<:f/. Hist., vol. vi., p. 53) says that "when 
Wyatt's insurrection broke out in Kent, the Duke of Suffolk with hif 
two brothers, Lord John and Lord Leonard Grey, rode down into 
Warwickshire an i tried to raise the country against the Spaniard." 



soon felt the sweets of one who began the work of funding 
and of making national debts ! The Queen, however, after 
great deliberation, determined to marry Philip, who was 
son and heir of the Emperor Charles V., and who, though 
a widower, and having children by his first wife, was still 
much younger than the Queen, who was now (in July, 
1554) in the thirty- ninth year of her age, while Philip was 
only twenty-seven. Philip arrived at Southampton in 
July, 1554, escorted by the combined fleets of England, 
Spain and the Netherlands, and on the 25th of that month 
the marriage took place in the Cathedral of Winchester, 
the ceremony being performed by Gardiner, who was the 
bishop of the see, and being attended by great numbers of 
nobles from all parts of Christendom. To show how little 
reliance is to be placed on Hume, I will here notice that 
he says the marriage took place at Westminster, and to 
this adds many facts equally false.'* His account of the 
whole of this transaction is a mere romance made up from 
Protestant writers, even whose accounts he has shamefully 
distorted to the prejudice of the views and character of 
the Queen. 

240. As things then stood, sound and evident good to 
England dictated this match. Leaving out Elizabeth, the 
next heir to the throne was Mary Queen of Scots, and she 
was betrothed to the Dauphin of France, so that England 
might fall to the lot of the French king, and as to Eliza- 
beth, even supposing her to survive the Queen, she now 
stood bastardized by two Acts of Parliament ; for the Act 
which had just been passed declaring Catherine to be the 
lawful wife of her father made her mother (what, indeed, 
Cranmer had declared her) an adulteress in law as she was 
in fact. Besides, if France and Scotland were evidently 
likely to become the patrimony of one and the same 
prince, it was necessary that England should take steps 

•• Hume, History (ed. ui sup.), ii., 296. 



199 

for strengthening herself also in the way of preparation. 
Such was the policy that dictated this celebrated match, 
which the historical calumniators of Mary have attributed 
to the worst and most low and disgusting of motives ; in 
which, however, they have only followed the example of 
the malignant traitors of the times we are referring to, it 
being only to be lamented that they were not then alive to 
share in their fate. 

241. Nothing ever was, nothing could be, more to the 
honour of England than every part of this transaction ; 
yet did it form the pretences of the traitors of that day, 
who, for the obvious reasons mentioned in the last para- 
graph, were constantly encouraged and abetted by France, 
and as constantly urged on by the disciples of Cranmer 
and his crew of German and Dutch teachers. When the 
rebels had, at one time, previous to Mary's marriage, 
advanced even to London, she went to the Guildhall, 
where she told the citizens that if she thought the marriage 
were injurious jo her people or to the honour of the state 
she would not assent to it, and that if it should not 
appear to the Parliament to be for the benefit of the 
whole kingdom she would never marry at all. " Where- 
fore," said she, ** stand fast against these rebels, your 
enemies and mine ; fear them not, for I assure ye that I 
fear them nothing at all." Thus she left them, leaving 
the hall resounding with their acclamations.^'' 

242. When the marriage articles appeared it was shown 
that on this occasion, as on all others, the Queen had kept 
her word most religiously, for even Hume is obliged to 
confess that these articles were " as favourable as possible 
for the interest and security and even the grandeur of 
England." What more was wanted, then ? And if, as 
Hume says was the case, " these article gave no satisfac- 
tion to the nation," all that we can say is that the nation 

^ Lingard, History^ vii., p. 157, 



200 

was very unreasonable and ungrateful. This is, however, 
a great falsehood, for what Hume here ascribes to the 
whole nation he ought to have confined to the plunderers 
and the fanatics whom, throughout his romance of this 
reign, he always calls the nation. The articles quoted 
from Rymer by Hume himself were, that though Philip 
should have the title of King the administration should be 
wholly in the Queen ; that no foreigner should hold any 
office in the kingdom ; that no change should be made in 
the English laws, customs, and privileges; that sixty 
thousand pounds a year (a million of our present money) 
should be settled on the Queen as her jointure, to be paid 
by Spain if she Outlived him ; that the male issue of this 
marriage should inherit, together with England, both Bur- 
gundy and the Low Countries ; and that if Don Carlos, 
Philip's son by his former marriage, should die leaving no 
issue, the Queen's issue, whether male or female, should 
inherit Spain, Sicily, Milan, and all the other dominions 
of Philip. Just before the marriage ceremony was per- 
formed, an envoy from the Emperor, Philip's father, de- 
livered to the English Chancellor a deed resigning to his 
son the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, the 
Emperor thinking it beneath the dignity of the Queen of 
England to marry one that was not a king. 

243. What transaction was ever more honourable to 
a nation than this transaction was to England ? What 
queen, what sovereign, ever took more care of the glory 
of a people ? Yet the fact appears to be that there was 
some jealousy in the nation at large as to this foreign con- 
nection, and I am not one of those who are disposed to 
censure this jealousy. But can I have the conscience to 
commend, or even to abstain from censuring, this jealousy 
in our Catholic forefathers, without feeling, as a Protes- 
tant, my cheeks burn with shame at what has taken place 
in Protestant times, and even in my own time ! When 
another Mary, a Protestant Mary, was brought to the 



J 



201 



throne, did the Parliament take care to keep the adminis- 
tration wholly in her and to give her husband the mere 
title of king ? Did they take care then that no foreigners 
should hold offices in England ? Oh, no ! That foreign, 
that Dutch husband, had the administration vested in 
him; and he brought ovei: whole crowds of foreigners, put 
them into the highest offices, gave them the highest titles, 
and heaped upon them large parcels of what was left of 
the Crown estate, descending to that Crown, in part at 
least, from the days of Alfred himself! And this transaction 
is called " glorious," and that, too, by the very men who 
talk of the " inglorious " reign of Mary ! What, then ; are 
sense and truth never to reign in England ? Are we to 
be duped unto all generations ? 

244. And if we come down to our own dear Protestant 
days, do we find the Prince of Saxe-Coburg the heir to 
mighty dominions ? Did he bring into the country, as 
Philip did, twenty-nine chests of bullion, loading to the 
Tower twenty-two carts and ninety-nine pack-horses ? 
Do we find him settling on his wife's issue great states 
and kingdoms ? Do we find his father making him a 
king on the eve of the marriage, because a person of 
lower title would be beneath a queen of England ? Do 
we find him giving his bride as a bridal present jewels 
to the amount of half a million of our money ? Do we 
find him settling on the Princess Charlotte a jointure of a 
million sterling a year if she should outlive him ? No ; 
but (and come and boast of it, you shameless revilers of 
this Catholic queen !) we find our Protestant Parliament 
settling on him fifty thousand pounds a year to come out 
of taxes raised on us, if he should outlive her ; which sum 
we now duly and truly pay in full tale, and shall possibly 
have to pay it for forty years yet to come.^ How we feel 

"^ The author refers to the marriage settlement of the Princess Charlotte 
of Wales, daughter of George IV. She married Prince Leopold of Saxe- 
Coburg in 18 1 6, and died in the following year. Her husband became the 
first King of the Belgians in 1831, and survived till 1865. 



202 

ourselves shrink when we thus compare our conduct with 
that of our Catholic fathers ! 

245. In my relation I have not adhered to the exact 
chronological order, which would have too much broken 
my matter into detached parcels ; but I should here 
observe that the marriage was previous to the reconcilia- 
tion with the Pope, and also previous to the Queen's 
generous restoration of the property which she held of the 
Church and the poor. It was also previous to those dread- 
ful punishments which she inflicted upon heretics, of which 
punishments I am now about to speak, and which, though 
monstrously exaggerated by the lying Fox and others, 
though a mere nothing compared with those inflicted after- 
wards on Catholics by Elizabeth, and though hardly to be 
called cruel when set in comparison with the rivers of 
Catholic blood that have flowed in Ireland, were neverthe- 
less such as to be deeply deplored by everyone, and by 
nobody more than the Catholics, whose religion, though 
these punishments were by no means caused by its 
principles, has been reproached as the cause, and the sole 
cause, of the whole of them. 

246. We have seen, in paragraphs 200 and 201, what a 
Babel of opinions and of religions had been introduced by 
Cranmer and his crew, and we have also seen that 
immorality, that vice of all sorts, that enmity and strife 
incessant, had been the consequence. Besides this, it was 
so natural that the Queen should desire to put down all 
these sects, and that she should be so anxious on the 
subject, that we are not at all surprised that, if she saw all 
other means ineflectual for the purpose, she should resort 
to means of the utmost severity that the laws of the land 
allowed of for the accompHshment of that purpose. The 
traitors and the leading rebels of her reign were all, or 
affected to be, of the new sects. Though small in number, 
they made up for that disadvantage by their indefatigable 
malignity, by their incessant efforts to trouble the state, 



203 

and indeed, to destroy the Queen herself. But I am for 
rejecting all apologies for her founded on provocations 
given to her, and also for rejecting all apologies founded on 
the disposition and influence of her councillors ; for if she 
had been opposed to the burning of heretics, that burning 
would certainly never have taken place. That burning is 
fairly to be ascribed to her ; but as even the malignant 
Hume gives her credit for sincerity, is it not just to con- 
clude that her motive was to put an end to the propagation 
amongst her people of errors which she deemed destructive 
of their souls, and the permission of the propagation of 
which she deemed destructive of her own ? And there is 
this much to be said in defence of her motive at any rate, 
that these new lights, into however many sects they might 
be divided, all agreed in teaching the abominable doctrine 
of salvation by faith alone without regard to works. 

247. As a preliminary to the punishment of heretics, 
there was an Act of Parliament passed in December, 1554 
(a year and a half after the Queen came to the throne), to 
restore the ancient statutes relative to heresy. These 
statutes were first passed against the Lollards in the reigns 
of Richard II. and Henry IV., and they provided that 
heretics who were obstinate should be burnt. These 
statutes were altered in the reign of Henry VIII. in 
order that he might get the property of heretics, and in 
that of Edward they were repealed ; not out of mercy, 
however, but because heresy was, according to those 
statutes, to promulgate opinions contrary to the Cathohc 
faith, and this did, of course, not suit the state of things 
under the new Church " as by law established." Therefore 
it was then held that heresy was punishable by common 
law, and that, in case of obstinacy, heretics might be 
burnt ; and accordingly many were punished and some 
burnt in that reign by process at common law ; and 
these were, too^ Protestants dissenting from Cranmer's 



204 

Church, who himself condemned them to the flames.* 
Now, however, the Catholic religion being again the 
religion of the country, it was thought necessary to return 
to ancient statutes, which accordingly were re-enacted. 
That which had been the law during seven reigns, com- 
prising nearly two centuries, and some of which reigns 
had been amongst the most glorious and most happy that 
England had ever known, onfe of the kings having won 
the title of King of France, and another of them having 
actually been crowned at Paris ; that which had been 
the law for so long a period was now the law again, so 
that here was nothing new at any rate. And observe, 
though these statutes were again repealed when Eliza- 
beth's policy induced her to be a Protestant, she enacted 
others to supply their place, and that both she and her 
successor, James I., burnt heretics ; though they had, as 
we shall see, a much more expeditious and less noisy way 
of putting out of the world those who still had the constancy 
to adhere to the religion of their fathers. 

248. The laws being passed were not likely to remain a 
dead letter. They were put in execution chiefly in conse- 
quence of condemnations in the spiritual court by Bonner, 
Bishop of London. The punishment was inflicted in the 
usual manner, dragging to the place of execution and then 
burning to death, the sufferer being tied to a stake in the 
midst of a pile of faggots, which, when set on fire, consumed 
him. Bishop Gardiner, the Chancellor, has been by 
Protestant writers charged with being the adviser of this 
measure. I can find no ground for this charge, while all 
agree that Pole, who was now become Archbishop of 



^ Joan Butcher, or Knell, of Kent, was condemned as a heretic by 
Cranmer in the rei^n of Edward VI. for holding peculiar opinions, and 
when the youthful King hesitated to sign the warrant Cranmer took it upon 
his conscience. Several others were obliged in the same reign to carry 
''faggots" on their recantation. 



205 

Canterbury in the place of Cranmer, disapproved of it. It 
is also undeniable that a Spanish friar, the confessor of 
PhiHp, preaching before the Queen, expressed his disappro- 
bation of it.^ Now, as the Queen was much more likely to 
be influenced, if at all, by Pole, and especially by PhiHp, 
than by Gardiner, the fair presumption is that it was her 
own measure. And as to Bonner, on whom so much 
blame has been thrown on this account, he had indeed been 
most cruelly used by Cranmer and his Protestants, but 
there was the council continually accusing all the bishops 
(and he more than any of the rest) of being too slow in the 
performance of this part of their duty.^^ Indeed, it is 
manifest that in this respect the council spoke the almost 
then universal sentiment ; for though the French ceased not 
to hatch rebeUions against the Queen, none of the grounds 
of the rebels ever were that she punished heretics. Their 
complaints related almost solely to the connection with 
Spain, and never to the *' flames of Smithfield," though we 
of later times have been made to believe that nothing else 
was thought of ; but the fact is, the persons put to death 
were chiefly of very infamous character, many of them 
foreigners, almost the whole of them residing in London 
and called in derision by the people at large the '' London 
Gospellers." Doubtless, out of two hundred and seventy- 
seven persons (the number stated by Hume on authority 
of Fox) who were thus punished, some may have been real 
martyrs to their opinions, and have been sincere and virtuous 
persons, but in this number of two hundred and seventy- 
seven many were convicted felons, some clearly traitors, as 
Ridley and Cranmer. These must be taken from the num- 



** Lingard, History ^ vii., p. 193. 

" Ibid.^ p. 194. The Lord Treasurer, the Marquess of Winchester, 
complained to the council and procured a reprimand to be sent to Bonner^ 
Lingard, p. 267, note, says— "I can find no pjfoof that he (Bonner) was a 
persecutor from choice, or went in search of victims.* 



I 



206 

ber ; and we may surely take such as were alive when Fox 
first published his book, and who expressly begged to decline 
the honour of being enrolled amongst its " Martyrs." As 
a proof of Fox's total disregard of truth, there was in the m\ 
next reign a Protestant parson, as Anthony Wood (a Pro- 
testant) tells us, who in a sermon related, on authority of 
Fox, that a Catholic of the name of Grimwood had been, 
as Fox said, a great enemy of the Gospellers, had been 
" punished by a judgment of God," and that " his bowels 
fell out of his body." Grimwood was not only alive at 
the time when the sermon was preached, but happened to be 
present in the church to hear it, and he brought an action 
of defamation against the preacher !® Another instance of 
Fox's falseness relates to the death of Bishop Gardiner. 
Fox and Burnet, and other vile calumniators of the acts 
and actors in Queen Mary's reign, say that Gardiner, on 
the day of the execution of Latimer and Ridley, kept 
dinner waiting till the news of their suffering should arrive, 
and that the Duke of Norfolk, who was to dine with him, 
expressed great chagrin at the delay ; that when the news 
came, '* transported with joy " they sat down to table, 
where Gardiner was suddenly seized with the disury, and 
died in horrible torments in a fortnight afterwards.^ Now 
Latimer and Ridley were put to death on the i6th of 
October, and Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History^ p. 386, 
states that Gardiner opened the Parliament on the 21st of 
October, that he attended in Parliament twice afterwards, 
that he died on the 12th of November of the gout, and not 
of disury, and that as to the Duke of Norfolk, he had been 
dead a year when this event took place !^^ What a hypo- 



*^ Anthony k Wood, Athena Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), ii., 789. 

•^ Burnet, History of the Reformation^ ed. Pocock, ii., 514. Burnet 
does not, however, say that it was the Duke of Norfolk who dined with 
Gardiner. 

'* Bale, as quoted in Pocock's Burnet^ ibid.^ note 23, speaks to Gardinei 
having been in full possession of his powers of body and mind at the meet- 
ing of Parliament on Ofctober 2i and 23. 



207 

crite, then, must that man be who pretends to believe in 
this Fox ! Yet this infamous book has, by the arts of 
the plunderers and their descendants, been circulated to a 
boundless extent amongst the people of England, who have 
been taught to look upon all the thieves, felons and 
traitors whom Fox calls " Martyrs," as sufferers resem- 
bling St. Stephen, St. Peter and St. Paul ! 

249. The real truth about these " Martyrs " is that they 
were generally a set of most wicked wretches, who sought 
to destroy the Queen and her government, and, under the 
pretence of conscience and superior piety, to obtain the 
means of again preying upon the people. No mild means 
could reclaim them ; those means had been tried : the 
Queen had to employ vigorous means, or to suffer her 
people to continue to be torn by the religious factions, 
created not by her but by her two immediate predeces- 
sors, who had been aided and abetted by many of those 
who now were punished, and who were worthy of ten 
thousand deaths each if ten thousand deaths could have 
been endured. They were, without a single exception, 
apostates, perjurers, or plunderers ; and the greater part 
of them had also been guilty of flagrant high treason 
against Mary herself, who had spared their lives, but 
whose lenity they had requited by every effort within their 
power to overset her authority and her government. To 
make particular mention of all the ruffians that perished 
upon this occasion would be a task as irksome as it would 
be useless ; but there were amongst them three of Cran- 
mer's bishops and himself ! For now justice at last 
overtook this most mischievous of all villains, who had 
justly to go to the same stake that he had unjustly caused 
so many others to be tied to ; the three others were 
Hooper, Latimer and Ridley, each of whom was, indeed, 
inferior in villainy to Cranmer, but to few other men that 
have ever existed. 

250. Hooper was a monk ; he broke his vow of cehbacy 



208 

and married a Flandrican ; he, being the ready tool of the 
Protector Somerset, whom he greatly aided in his plunder 
of the churches, got two bishoprics,^^ though he himself 
had written against pluralities. He was a co-operator in 
all the monstrous cruelties inflicted on the people during 
the reign of Edward, and was particularly active in re- 
commending the use of German troops to bend the necks 
of the English to the Protestant yoke. Latimer began his 
career, not only as a Catholic priest, but as a most furious 
assailant of the Reformation religion. By this he obtained 
from Henry VHI. the bishopric of Worcester. He next 
changed his opinions, but he did not give up his Catholic 
bishopric ! Being suspected, he made abjuration of Pro- 
testantism ; he thus kept his bishopric for twenty years 
while he inwardly reprobated the principles of the Church, 
and which bishopric he held in virtue of an oath to oppose 
to the utmost of his power all dissenters from the Catholic 
Church. In the reigns of Henry and Edward he sent to the 
stake Catholics and Protestants for holding opinions which 
he himself had before held openly, or that he held secretly 
at the time of his so sending them. Lastly, he was a chief 
tool in the hands of the tyrannical Protector Somerset in 
that black and unnatural act of bringing his brother. Lord 
Thomas Somerset, to the block. Ridley had been a 
Catholic bishop in the reign of Henry VHL, when he 
sent to the stake Catholics who denied the king's supre- 
macy and Protestants who denied transubstantiation. In 
Edward's reign he was a Protestant bishop, and denied 
transubstantiation himself. He in Edward's reign got 
the bishopric of London by a most roguish agreement to 
transfer the greater part of its possessions to the rapacious 
ministers and courtiers of that day. Lastly, he was guilty 

^ Hooper was first made bishop of Gloucester, and subsequently on 
becoming bishop of Worcester he obtained the royal dispensation to hold 
his former see in commendam. 



209 

of high treason against the Queen, in openly (as we have 
seen in paragraph 220) and from the pulpit exhorting the 
people to stand by the usurper, Lady Jane, and thus 
endeavouring to produce civil war and the death of his 
sovereign, in order that he might by treason be enabled to 
keep that bishopric which he had obtained by simony 
including perjury. 

251. A pretty trio of Protestant " saints ; " quite worthy, 
however, of Martin Luther, who says in his own works that 
it was by the arguments of the devil (who, he says, fre- 
quently ate, drank and slept with him) that he was induced 
to turn Protestant ; three worthy followers of that Luther 
who is by his disciple Melancthon called ** a brutal man, 
void of piety and humanity, one more a Jew than a Chris- 
tian ; " three followers altogether worthy of this great 
founder of that Protestantism which has split the world 
into contending sects : but black as these are, they bleach 
the moment Cranmer appears in his true colours. But 
alas ! where is the pen or tongue to give us those colours ? 
Of the sixty-five years that he lived, and of the thirty-five 
years of his manhood, twenty-nine years were spent in the 
commission of a series of acts which, for wickedness in their 
nature and for mischief in their consequences, are abso- 
lutely without anything approaching to a parallel in the 
annals of human infamy. Being a fellow of a college at 
Cambridge, and having, of course, made an engagement (as 
the fellows do to this day) not to marry while he was a 
fellow, he married secretly and still enjoyed his fellow- 
ship. While a married man he became a priest and took 
the oath of celibacy,^^ and going to Germany he married 
another wife, the daughter of a Protestant '* saint," though 
his oath bound him to have no wife at all. He, as arch- 
bishop, enforced the law of celibacy, while he himself 

" This is incorrect : Cranmer lost his fellowship on his marriage, and 
recovered it and became a priest upon the death of his first wife. 

14 



210 

secretly kept his German wife in the palace at Canterbury 
having, as we have seen in paragraph 104, imported her in 
a chest. He, as ecclesiastical judge, divorced Henry VHI. 
from three wives, the grounds of his decision in two of the 
cases being directly the contrary of those which he himself 
had laid down when he declared the marriages to be valid ; 
and in the case of Ai^ne Boleyn he, as ecclesiastical judge, 
pronounced that Anne had never been the king's wife ; 
while as a member of the House of Peers he voted for 
her death, as having been an adulteress and thereby guilty 
of treason to her husband. As archbishop under Henry 
(which office he entered upon with a premeditated false 
oath on his lips) he sent men and women to the stake 
because they were not Catholics, and he sent Catholics to 
the stake because they would not acknowledge the king's 
supremacy and thereby perjure themselves as he had so 
often done. Become openly a Protestant in Edward's 
reign, and openly professing those very principles for the 
professing of which he had burnt others, he now punished 
his fellow Protestants because their grounds for protesting 
were different from his. As executor of the will of his old 
master, Henry, which gave the crown (after Edward) to 
his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, he conspired with others 
to rob those two daughters of their right, and to give the 
crown to Lady Jane, that queen of nine days, whom he with 
others ordered to be proclaimed. Confined, notwithstanding 
his many monstrous crimes, merely to the palace at Lam- 
beth, he, in requital of the Queen's lenity, plotted with 
traitors in the pay of France to overset her government. 
Brought at last to trial and to condemnation as a heretic, 
he professed himself ready to recant. He was respited for 
six weeks, during which time he signed six different forms 
of recantation, each more ample than the former.^' He 
declared that the Protestant religion was false ; that the 

" Lingard, History ^ vii., p. 199. 



211 

Catholic religion was the only true one ; that he now 
believed in all the doctrines of the Catholic Church ; that 
he had been a horrid blasphemer against the Sacrament ; 
that he was unworthy of forgiveness ; that he prayed the 
people, the Queen and the Pope to have pity on and to 
pray for his wretched soul; and that he had made and 
signed this declaration without fear and without hope of 
favour, and for the discharge of his conscience, and as a 
warning to others. It was a question in the Queen's 
Council whether he should be pardoned, as other recanters 
had been ; but it was resolved that his crimes were so 
enormous that it would be unjust to let him escape.^ 
Brought, therefore, to the pubUc reading of his recanta- 
tion on his way to the stake, seeing the pile ready, now 
finding that he must die, and carrying in his breast all his 
malignity undiminished, he recanted his recantation, thrust 
into the fire the hand that had signed it, and thus expired, 
protesting against that very religion in which, only nine 
hours before, he had called God to witness that he firmly 
believed.®^ 

252. And Mary is to be called the " Bloody " because 
she put to death monsters of iniquity like this ! It is 
surely time to do justice to the memory of this calumniated 
queen ; and not to do it by halves, I must, contrary to my 
intention, employ part of the next chapter in giving the 
remainder of her history. 



* Lingard History, vii. , p. 200. His offences required that he should 
suffer " for ensample sake." 



Ibid.y p. 203. 



212 



CHAPTER IX. 

253. I now, before I proceed to the " Reformation" works 
in the reign of Elizabeth, must conclude the reign of Mary. 
"Few and full of sorrow" were the days of her power. 
She had innumerable difficulties to struggle with, a most 
inveterate and wicked faction continually plotting against 
her, and the state of her health, owing partly to her weak 
frame and partly to the anxieties of her whole life, rendered 
her life so uncertain that the unprincipled plunderers, 
though they had again become Catholics, were continually 
casting an eye towards her successor, who, though she 
was now a Catholic, was pretty sure to become Protestant 
whenever she came to the throne, because it was impossible 
that the Pope should ever acknowledge her legitimacy. 

254. In the year 1557 the Queen was at war with 
France, on account of the endeavours of that court to 
excite rebellion against her in England. Her husband, 
Philip, whose father, the Emperor, had now retired to a 
convent, leaving his son to supply his place and possess all 
his dominions, was also at war with France, the scene of 
which war was the Netherlands and the north of France. 
An English army had joined Philip, who penetrated into 
France and gained a great and important victory over the 
French. But a French army, under the Duke of Guise, 
took advantage of the naked state of Calais to possess 
itself of that important town,^ which had been in posses- 



Calais was taken on January 22, 1558. 






213 

sion of the English for more than two hundred years. 
It was not Calais alone that England held, but the 
whole country round for many miles, including Guisnes, 
Ardres, and other places, together with the whole terri- 
tory called the county of Oye. Edward HI. had taken 
Calais after a siege of nearly a year. It had always been 
regarded as very valuable for the purposes of trade; it 
was deemed a great monument of glory to England, and 
it was a thorn continually rankling in the side of France. 
Dr. Heylyn tells us that Monsieur de Cordes, a nobleman 
who lived in the reign of Louis XL, used to say " that he 
would be content to lie seven years in hell upon condition 
that this town were regained from the English." 

255. The Queen felt this blow most severely. It 
hastened that death which overtook her a few months 
afterwards ; and when her end approached she told her 
attendants that "if they opened her body they would 
find Calais at the bottom of her heart." This great mis- 
fortune was owing to the neglect if not perfidy of her 
councillors, joined to the dread of Philip to see Calais 
and its dependencies in the hands of Mary's successor. 
Doctor Heylyn (a Protestant, mind) tells us that Philip, 
" seeing that danger might arise to Calais, advised the 
Queen of it, and freely offered his assistance for the 
defence of it ; but that the English Council, over- wisely 
jealous of Philip, neglected both his advice and profi"er." 
They left the place with only five hundred men in it, 
and that they did this intentionally it is hardly possible 
to doubt. Still, however, if the Queen had lived but 
a little longer, Calais would have been restored.^ The 
war was not yet over. In 1558 Phihp and the King 



^ Philip was conscious that he had led England into the war and 
deemed himself bound to do what he could to retrieve the loss. He 
resisted most tempting ofifers for peace, declaring that the restoration of 
Calais was an indispensable condition {c/. Lingard, vii., p. 240). 



214 

of France began negotiations for peace, and one of the 
conditions of Philip (who was the most powerful, and 
who had beaten the French) was that Calais should be 
restored to England ; and this condition would unquestion- 
ably have been adhered to by Philip, but in the midst 
of these negotiations Mary died ! 

256. Thus, then, it is to the '* Reformation," which had 
caused the loss of Boulogne in the plundering and 
cowardly reign of Edward VI., that we, even to this day, 
owe that we have to lament the loss of Calais, which 
was at last irretrievably lost by the selfishness and perfidy 
of Elizabeth. While all historians agree that the loss of 
Calais preyed most severely upon the Queen and hastened 
her death, while they all do this great honour to her 
memory, none of them attempt to say that the loss of 
Boulogne had even the smallest effect on the spirits of 
her " Reformation " brother ! He was too busy in pulling 
down altars and in confiscating the property of guilds 
and fraternities to think much about national honour ; or, 
perhaps, though he, while he was pulling down altars, 
still called himself " Defender of the Faith," he might 
think that territory and glory won by Catholics ought 
not to be retained by Protestants. Be this as it may, we 
have seen a loss to England much greater than that of 
Calais ; we have seen the half of a continent cut off from 
the crown of England, and seen it become a most formid- 
able rival on the seas,' and we have never heard that it 
preyed much upon the spirits of the sovereign in whose 
reign the loss took place. 

257. With the loss of Calais at the bottom of her heart, 
and with a well-grounded fear that her successor would 
undo as to religion all that she had done, the unfortunate 



" The reference is to the loss of the American colonies and the subsequent 
rise of the navy of the United States, all which was recent history at the 
date when Cobbett wrote. 



I 



215 

Mary expired on November 17, 1558, in the forty-second 
year of her age and in the sixth year of her reign, leav- 
ing to her sister and successor the example of fidelity, 
sincerity, patience, resignation, generosity, gratitude and 
purity in thought, word and deed ; an example, however, 
which in every particular that sister and successor took 
special care not to follow. As to those punishments which 
have served as the ground for all the abuse heaped on the 
memory of this queen, what were they other than punish- 
ments inflicted on offenders against the religion of the 
country ? The *' fires of Smithfield " have a horrid sound ; 
but, to say nothing about the persecutions of Edward VI., 
EHzabeth and James I., is it more pleasant to have one's 
bowels ripped out while the body is alive (as was Eliza- 
beth's favourite v/iy) than to be burnt ? Protestants have 
even exceeded Catholics in the work of punishing offenders 
of this sort ; and they have punished, too, with less reason 
on their side. The Catholics have one faith, the Protestants 
have fifty faiths, and yet each sect, whenever it gets upper- 
most, punishes in some way or other the rest as offenders. 
Even at this very time ^ there are, according to a return 
recently laid before the House of Commons, no less 
than fifty-seven persons who have within a few years 
suffered imprisonment and other punishments added to it 
as offenders against religion, and this, too, at a time when 
men are permitted openly to deny the divinity of Christ, 
and others openly to preach in their synagogues that there 
never was any Christ at all. A man sees the laws tolerate 
twenty sorts of Christians (as they all call themselves), each 
condemning all the rest to eternal flames ; and if, in conse- 
quence of this, he be led to express his belief that they are 
all wrong, and that the thing they are disputing about is 
altogether something unreal, he may be punished with six 
years (or his whole life) of imprisonment in a loathsome 

* 1825. 



2l6 

gaol ! Let us think of these things when we are talking of 
the *' bloody Queen Mary."^ The punishments now-a-days 
proceed from the maxim that " Christianity is part and 
parcel of the law of the land." When did it begin ? Be- 
fore or since the " Reformation ? " And who, amongst all 
these sects which it would seem this law tolerates, which 
of them is to tell us, from which of them are we to learn 
what Christianity is ? 

258. As to the mass of suffering, supposing the whole of 
the 277 persons who suffered in the reign of Mary to have 
suffered solely for the sake of religion, instead of having 
been, like Cranmer and Ridley, traitors and felons, as well 
as offenders on the score of religion ; let us suppose the 
whole 277 to have suffered for offences against religion : did 
the mass of suffering surpass the mass of suffering on this 
same account during the reign of the late king ? And 
unless Smithfield and burning have any peculiar agony, 
anything worse than death to impart, did Smithfield ever 



* Lingard says : ** The foulest blot on the character of this queen is her 
long and cruel persecution of the reformers. The sufferings of the victims 
naturally begat an antipathy to the woman by whose authority they were 
inflicted. It Is, however, but fair to recollect that the extirpation of 
erroneous doctrine was inculcated as a duty by the leaders of every religious 
party. Mary only practised what they taught; it was her misfortune 
rather than her fault that she was not more enlightened than the wisest of 
her contemporaries" {History^ vii., p. 242), and ** if anything could be 
urged in extenuation of these cruelties, it must have been the provocation 
given by the reformers. The succession of a Catholic sovereign had 
deprived them of office and power, had suppressed the English service, the 
idol of their affections, and had re-established the ancient worship, which 
they deemed anti- Christian and idolatrous. Disappointment embittered 
their zeal, and enthusiasm sanctified their intemperance. They heaped on 
the queen, her bishops and her religion, every indecent and irritating 
epithet which language could supply. Her clergy could not exercise their 
functions without danger to their lives; a dagger was thrown at one priest 
in the pulpit, a gun was discharged at another, and several wounds were 
inflicted on a third while he administered the communion in his church " 
[ibid.,^, 207). 



II 



217 

witness so great a mass of suffering as the Old Bailey has 
witnessed on account of oflfences against that purely Pro- 
testant invention, bank-notes? Perhaps this invention, 
expressly intended to keep out Popery, has cost ten times, 
if not ten times ten times, the blood that was shed in the 
reign of her whom we still have the injustice or the folly to 
call the " bloody Queen Mary," all whose excellent quali- 
ties, all whose exalted virtues, all her piety, charity, 
generosity, sacred adherence to her faith and her word, all 
her gratitude, and even those feelings of anxiety for the 
greatness and honour of England, which feelings hastened 
her to the grave, — all these, in which she was never 
equalled by any sovereign that sat on the English throne, 
Alfred alone excepted, whose religion she sought to 
re-establish for ever, — all these are to pass for nothing, and 
we are to call her the " bloody Mary " because it suits the 
views oi those who fatten on the spoils of that Church 
which never suffered Englishmen to bear the odious and 
debasing name of pauper. 

259. To the pauper and ripping-up reign we now come. 
This is the reign of "good Queen Bess." We shall in a 
short time see how good she was. The Act of Parlia- 
ment which is still in force relative to the poor and poor- 
rates was passed in the forty-third year of this reign : but 
that was not the only act of the kind ; there were eleven 
acts passed before that, in consequence of the poverty and 
misery into which the *' Reformation " had plunged the 
people. However, it is the last number of my work 
which is to contain the history of the rise and progress of 
English pauperism from the beginning of the " Reforma- 
tion " down to the present time. At present I have to 
relate what took place with regard to the affairs of religion. 

260. Elizabeth during the reign of her brother had 
been a Protestant, and during the reign of her sister a 
Catholic. At the time of her sister's death she not only 
went to mass publicly, but she had a Catholic chapel in 



2l8 

her house, and also a confessor. These appearances had 
not, however, deceived her sister, who to the very last 
doubted her sincerity. On her death-bed, honest and 
sincere Mary required from her a frank avowal of her 
opinions as to religion. Elizabeth, in answer, prayed God 
that the earth might open and swallow her if she were not 
a true Roman Catholic* She made the same declaration 
to the Duke of Feria, the Spanish envoy, whom she so 
completely deceived that he wrote to Philip that the 
accession of Elizabeth would make no alteration in 
matters .of religion in England. In spite of all this, it 
was not long before she began the persecution of her 
unhappy subjects because they were Roman Catholics. 

261. She was illegitimate by law. The marriage of her 
mother had been by law, which yet remained unrepealed, 
declared to be null and void from the beginning.' Her 
accession having been in the usual way notified to foreign 
powers, that is, that *' she had succeeded to the throne 
by hereditary right and the consent of the nation," the 
Pope answered that he did not understand the hereditary 
right of a person not born in lawful wedlock,® so that he, of 



' This is given on the authority of the life of Jane Dormer, one of Mary's 
maids of honour, afterwards duchess of Feria. Her future husband, the 
Spanish envoy, was so convinced of Elizabeth's sincerity that he removed 
the Queen's doubts on the matter (Lingard, History^ vii., p. 241). The 
same account is given by Sander, Schism (ed. Lewis), p. 232. A contem- 
porary letter from Edwin Sandys, afterwards one of Elizabeth's bishops, 
to Bullinger (December 20, 1558), gives as Elizabeth's reply about religion, 
*' As to religion I promise this much, that I will not change it provided 
only it can be proved by the word of God, which shall be the only foun- 
dation and rule of my religion " {Zurich Letters, Parker Society, No 2). 

^ Parliament, on the accession of Elizabeth, passed an act recognizing 
the Queen's just title to the crown, but said nothing about the validity of 
her mother's marriage. 

" On this Lingard writes: '*Carne, the resident at Rome, was ordered 
to acquaint the pontiff that she (Elizabeth) had succeeded to her sister, and 
had determined to offer no violence to the consciences of her subject,s 



219 

course, could not acknowledge her hereditary right. This 
was of itself a pretty strong inducement for a lady of so 
flexible a conscience as she had to resolve to be a Pro- 
testant. But there was another and even a stronger 
motive. Mary, Queen of Scotland, who had married the 
Dauphin of France, claimed the crown of England as the 
nearest legitimate descendant of Henry VII.;® so that 
Elizabeth ran a manifest risk of losing the crown, unless 
she became a Protestant and crammed Cranmer's creed 
down the throats of her people. If she remained a Catho- 
lic she must yield submission to the decrees from Rome ; 
the Pope could have made it a duty with her people to 
abandon her, or, at the very least, he could have greatly 
embarrassed her. In short, she saw clearly that if her 
people remained Catholics she could never reign in perfect 
safety. She knew that she had no hereditary right ; she 
knew that the law ascribed her birth to adultery. She 
never could think of reigning quietly over a people the 
head of whose Church refused to acknowledge her right 



whatever might be their religious creed. It was the misfortune of Paul, 
who had passed his eightieth year, that he adopted opinions with the 
credulity and maintained them with the pertinacity of old age. His ear 
had been pre-occupied by the diligence of the French ambassador, who 
suggested that to admit the succession of Elizabeth would be to approve 
the pretended marriage of her parents Henry VHI. and Anne Boleyn ; 
to annul the decisions of Clement VII. and Paul III." {History, vii., p. 
253). Canon Tierney, in his edition of Dodcfs Church History (vol. iv., 
preface), shows on the authority of Carne's own letters that it is highly prob- 
able the Pope never used the intemperate language usually attributed to 
him. It seems unlikely that Came was ordered to announce Elizabeth's 
accession to him, and the story is considered by Canon Tierney to be the 
outcome of *' the inventive powers of Paul Sarpi," by whom it was first 
published in his History of the Council of Trent, from which it has passed 
into every history. Catholic and Protestant. 

' Mary Stuart, at the command of her father-in-law, assumed the title 
of Queen of England, and quartered the English arms with those of France 
and Scotland. 



220 

to the crown ; and resolving to wear that crown, she 
resolved, cost what ruin or blood it might, to compel her 
people to abandon that very religion, her belief in which 
she had a few months before declared by praying to " God 
that the earth might open and swallow her alive if she 
were not a true Roman Catholic." 

262. The Pope's answer was honest, but it was impolitic, 
and most unfortunate it was for the English and Irish people, 
who had now to prepare for sufferings such as they had never 
known before. The situation of things was extremely fa- 
vourable to the Protestants. Mary, the Queen of Scots, 
the real lawful heir to the throne, was, as we have seen, 
married to the Dauphin of France. If Elizabeth were set 
aside, or if she died without issue before Mary, England 
must become an appendage of France. The loss of Calais 
and of Boulogne had mortified the nation enough, but for 
England herself to be transferred to France was what no 
Englishman could think of with patience ; so that she 
became strong from the dread that the people had of the 
consequences of her being put down. It was the betroth- 
ing of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin which induced 
Mary, Queen of England, to marry Philip, and thereby to 
secure an ally for England in case of Scotland becoming 
a dependence of France. How much more pressing was 
the danger now, when the Queen of Scots was actually 
married to the Dauphin (the heir apparent to the French 
throne), and when, if she were permitted to possess the 
crown of England, England, in case of her having a son, 
must become a province of France ! 

263. This state of things was therefore most unfortunate 
for the Catholics. It made many, very many, of themselves 
cool in opposition to the change which the new queen soon 
showed her determination to effect ; for, however faithful 
as to their religion, they were Englishmen, and abhorred 
the thought of being the underlings of Frenchmen. They 
might hate the Queen for her apostasy and tyranny, but 



221 

still they could not but desire that England should remain 
an independent state ; and to keep her such the uphold- 
ing of Elizabeth seemed absolutely necessary. Those who 
eulogize Henry IV. of France, who became a Catholic 
expressly and avowedly for the purpose of possessing and 
keeping the throne of that country, cannot very con- 
sistently blame Elizabeth for becoming a Protestant for 
an exactly similar reason. I do not attempt to justify 
either of them ; but I must confess that if anything would 
have induced me to uphold Elizabeth, it would have been 
that she — as far as human foresight could go — was an 
instrument necessary to preserve England from subjection 
to France ; and beyond all doubt this was the main reason 
for which, at the outset at least, she was upheld by many 
of the eminent and powerful men of that day. 

264. But if we admit that she was justified in thus con- 
sulting her preservation as a queen and the nation's inde- 
pendence at the expense of religious considerations, if we 
admit that she had a right to give a preference to Pro- 
testants, and to use all gentle means for the totally 
changing of the religion of her people, if we admit this, — 
and that is admitting a great deal more than justice de- 
mands of us, — who can refrain from being filled with horror 
at the barbarity which she so unsparingly exercised for the 
accomplishment of her purpose ? 

265. The intention to change the religion of the country 
became in a short time so manifest that all the bishops 
but one refused to crown her.^" She at last found one to do 



"* Elizabeth became Queen on November 17, 1558. On December 5, 
when Queen Mary was buried, Bishop White, who preached, expressed his 
fear that the Protestant exiles would return. Prior to December 27, direc- 
tions were issued for part of the service to be in English, and forbidding the 
elevation of the host. Parker was pitched upon as Pole's successor before 
the ck)se of the year, and in January the great seal was taken from Arch- 
bishop Heath and given to Nicholas Bacon. This and other similar facts 
made it certain that Elizabeth's intentions as to a new '* settlement of 



222 

it, but even he would not consent to do the thing without 
her conformity to the Catholic ritual." Very soon, however, 
a series of acts were passed which, by degrees, put down 
the Catholic worship and re-introduced the Protestant, and 
she found the plunderers and possessors of plunder just as 
ready to conform to her ecclesiastical sway as they had 
been to receive absolution from Cardinal Pole in the last 
reign. Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, which had 
been ascribed by the Parliament to the suggestions of the 
" Holy Ghost," had been altered and amended even in 
Edward's reign. It was now revived, and altered and 
amended again, and still it was ascribed to the " dictates of 
the Holy Ghost ! "^ 

266. If these Acts of Parliament had stopped here they 
would certainly have been bad and disgraceful enough. 
But such a change was not to be effected without blood. 
This Queen was resolved to reign : the blood of her people 
she deemed necessary to her own safety, and she never 

religion " had been well known early in her reign. ** The refusal of the 
bishops to officiate at her coronation (January 14, 1559) . . . probably arose," 
says Hallam, " from her order that the host should not be elevated, which 
in truth was not legally to be justified " {Constitutional History ^ loth ed., 
i., p. no, note). 

" The ceremony was performed by Oglethorp, bishop of Carlisle, on 
January 15, 1559. *'But if he was prevailed upon to crown the queen, 
she on her part was compelled to take the accustomed oath and to conform 
to all the rites of the Catholic pontifical " (Lingard, History^ vii., p. 256; 
cf. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata, Queen Elizabeth, p. 106). 

'2 The Acts of Uniformity, establishing the Anglican Liturgy, met with 
considerable opposition among the lords ; nine temporal peers and all the 
bishops protested against it. The changes in the Elizabethan Book of 
Common Prayer from the Prayer Book of 1552 were very slight. **The 
words used in distributing the elements," writes Hallam, " were so con- 
trived, by blending the two forms successively used under Edward, as 
neither to offend the Popish or Lutheran, nor the Zwinglian communicant. 
. . . Burnet owns that the greater part of the nation still adhered to 
this tenet (of the real or corporal presence), though it was not the opinion of 
the rulers of the Church " {Constitutional History^ loth ed., i., p. in, note). 



223 

scrupled to make it flow. She looked upon the Catholic 
religion as her mortal enemy; and cost what it might, she 
was resolved to destroy it if she could, the means being by 
her those which best answered her end. 

267. With this view statutes the most bloody were 
passed. All persons were compelled to take the oath of 
supremacy, on pain of death. To take the oath of su- 
premacy, that is to say, to acknowledge the Queen's 
supremacy in spiritual matters, was to renounce the Pope 
and the Catholic religion, or in other words to become an 
apostate.^' Thus was a very large part of her people at 
once condemned to death for adhering to the religion of 
their fathers, and moreover for adhering to that very 
religion in which she had openly Uved till she became 
queen, and to her firm belief in which she had sworn at 
her coronation. 

268. Besides this act of monstrous barbarity, it was 
made high treason in a priest to say mass, it was made 
high treason in a priest to come into the kingdom from 
abroad, it was made high treason to harbour or to relieve a 
priest. And on these grounds and others of a like nature, 
hundreds upon hundreds were butchered in the most 
inhuman manner, being first hung up, then cut down alive, 
their bowels then ripped up and their bodies chopped into 
quarters ; and this I again beg you, sensible and just 
Englishmen, to observe, only because the unfortunate 
persons were too virtuous and sincere to apostatize from 
that faith which this queen herself had at her coronation, 
in her coronation oath, solemnly sworn to adhere to and 
defend ! 

269. Having pulled down the altars, set up the tables, 



" ** The oath of supremacy renounced the spiritual as well as the 
temporal jurisdiction of every foreign prince or prelate. . . . It was highly 
penal, and for the third offence treasonable, to maintain such supremacy by 
writing or advised speaking" (Hallam, Constitutional History^ i., p. 112). 



224 

having ousted the Catholic priests and worship and put in 
their stead a set of hungry, beggarly creatures, with 
Cranmer's Prayer Book amended in their hands,^^ having 
done this, she compelled her Catholic subjects to attend in 
the churches under enormous penalties, which rose at last 
to death itself, in case of perseverance in refusal ! Thus 
were all the good, all the sincere, all the conscientious 
people in the kingdom incessantly harrassed, ruined by 
enormous fines, brought to the gallows, or compelled to flee 
from their native country.^^ Thus was this Protestant 
religion watered with the tears and the blood of the people 
of England. Talk of Catholic persecution and cruelty ! 
Where are you to find persecution and cruelty like this 
inflicted by Catholic princes ? Elizabeth put, in one way 
or another, more Catholics to death in one year, for not 
becoming apostates to the religion which she had sworn to 
be hers, and to be the only true one, than Mary put to 
death in her whole reign for having apostatized from the 
reHgion of her and their fathers, and to which religion she 
herself had always adhered. Yet the former is called, or 
has been called, "good Queen Bess," and the latter, 
*' bloody Queen Mary." Even the horrid massacre of St. 
Bartholomew was nothing when fairly compared with the 
butcheries and other cruelties of the reign of this Protestant 
queen of England, — yes, a mere nothing ; and yet she put 
on mourning upon that occasion, and had the consummate 

" The second Prayer Book of Edward VL, with certain small changes, 
was ordered to be used by the ministers in all churches under penalty of 
forfeiture, deprivation and death (Lingard, History ^ vii., p. 259). 

'^ "The statute of Uniformity," says Hallam {ut sup., p. 1 13) "trenched 
more on the natural rights of conscience ; prohibiting, under pain of forfeit- 
ing goods and chattels for the first offence, of a year's imprisonment for the 
second, and of imprisonment during life for the third, the use by a minister, 
whether beneficed or not, of any but the established liturgy, and imposing 
a fine of one shilling on all who should absent themselves from church on 
Sundays and holy days." 



225 

hypocrisy to affect horror at the cruelties that the King of 
France had committed. 

270. This massacre took place at Paris in the year 1572, 
and in the fourteenth year of Elizabeth's reign ; and as it 
belongs to the history of that day, as it was, in fact, in part 
produced by her own incessant and most mischievous 
intrigues, and as it has been made a great handle of in the 
work of calumniating the Catholics, even to this day, it is 
necessary that I give a true account of it, and that I go back 
to those civil wars in France which she occasioned, and 
in which she took so large a part, and which finally lost 
Calais and its territory to England. The *' Reformation " 
which Luther said he was taught by the devil had found 
its way into France so early as in the year 1530 or there- 
abouts. The '* reformers " there were called Huguenots. 
For a long while they were of little consequence ; but they 
at last, in the reign of Charles IX., became formidable to 
the government by being taken hold of by those ambitious 
and rebellious leaders, Conde and Coligny. The faction of 
which these two were the chiefs wanted to have the 
governing of France during the minority of Charles, who 
came to the throne in the year 1561 at ten years of age. 
His mother, the Queen Dowager, gave the preference to 
the Duke of Guise and his party. The disappointed 
nobles, Conde and Coligny, needed no better motive for 
becoming most zealous Protestants, the Guises being 
zealous in the Catholic cause ! Hence arose an open 
rebellion on the part of the former, fomented by the Queen 
of England, who seemed to think that she never could be 
safe as long as there was Catholic prince, priest or people, 
left upon the face of the earth, and who never stuck at 
means if they were but calculated to effect her end. She 
was herself an apostate, she wanted to annihilate that from 
which she had apostatized, and by her endeavours to effect 
her purpose she made her people bleed at every pore, and 
made no scruple upon any occasion to sacrifice the national 
honour. 

IS 



226 

271. At her coming to the throne she found the country 
at war with France, and Calais in its hands, that fortress 
and territory having, as we have seen in paragraph 254, 
been taken by a French army under the Duke of Guise. 
She almost immediately made peace with France, and that, 
too, without getting Calais back, as she might have done 
if she had not preferred her own private interest to the 
interest and honour of England. The negotiations for 
peace (England, Spain, and France being the parties) were 
carried on at Cateau Cambresis, in France. All was 
soon settled with regard to Spain and France ; but Philip, 
(Mary's husband, remember,) faithful to his engagements, 
refused to sign the treaty until the new Queen of England 
should be satisfied with regard to Calais ; and he even 
offered to continue the war for six years unless Calais was 
restored, provided Elizabeth would bind herself not to 
make a separate peace during that period. She declined 
this generous offer ; she had begun to rip up her subjects, 
and was afraid of war, and she therefore clandestinely 
entered into negotiations with France, and it was agreed 
that the latter should keep Calais for eight years, or pay 
to England 500,000 crowns ! Never was there a baser act 
than this treaty on the part of England. But this was 
not all ; for the treaty further stipulated that if France 
committed any act of aggression against England during 
the eight years, or if England committed any act of aggres- 
sion against France during that time, the treaty should be 
void, and that the former should lose the right of retaining 
and the latter the claim to the restoration of this valuable 
town and territory.^* 

272. This treaty was concluded in 1559, and it was a 
treaty not only of friendship but of alliance between the 



'" Lingard, History^ vii., p. 266. The whole of the facts in the subse- 
quent pages of this chapter are practically taken from Dr. Liffgard's 
History, where the authorities for the statements may be seen. ^ 



227 

parties. But before three years out of the eight had 
passed away, " good Queen Bess," out of pure hatred and 
fear of the Catholics, from a pure desire to make her 
tyrannical sway secure, from the sole desire of being still 
able to fine, imprison, and rip up her unfortunate subjects, 
forfeited all claim to the restoration of Calais, and that 
too by a breach of treaty more flagrant and more base than 
perhaps had ever before been witnessed in the world. 

273. Conde and Coligny, with their Huguenots, had 
stirred up a formidable civil war in France. " Good 
Queen Bess's " ambassador at that court stimulated and 
assisted the rebels to the utmost of his power. At last 
Vidame, an agent of Conde and Coligny, came secretly 
over to England to negotiate for military, naval, and 
pecuniary assistance. They succeeded with " good Bess," 
who, wholly disregarding the solemn treaties by which she 
was bound to Charles IX., King of France, entered into a 
formal treaty with the French rebels to send them an army 
and money, for the purpose of carrying on war against 
their sovereign, of whom she was an ally, having bound 
herself in that character by a solemn oath on the Evange- 
lists ! By this treaty she engaged to furnish men, ships, 
and money ; and the traitors, on their part, engaged to put 
Havre de Grace at once into her hands, as a pledge, not 
only for the repayment of the money to be advanced, but 
for the restoration of Calais ! This infamous compact 
richly deserved the consequences that attended it." 

274. The French ambassador in London, when he found 
that an intercourse was going on between the Queen and 
the agents of the rebels, went to Cecil, the secretary of 
state, carrying the treaty of Cateau Cambresis in his hand, 
and demanded, agreeably to the stipulations of that treaty, 
that the agents of the rebels should be delivered up as 
traitors to their sovereign, and he warned the English 

" Lingard, History ^ vi., pp. 37-38. 



228 

government that any act of aggression on its part would 
annihilate its claim to the recovery of Calais at the end 
of the eight years. But " good Bess " had caused the 
civil wars in France ; she had, by her bribes and other 
underhand means, stirred them up, and she believed that 
the success of the French rebels was necessary to her own 
security on her throne of doubtful right ; and as she hoped 
to get Calais in this perfidious way, she saw nothing but 
gain in the perfidy. 

275. The rebels were in possession of Dieppe, Rouen, 
Havre de Grace, and had extended their power over a con- 
siderable part of Normandy. They at once put Havre 
and Dieppe into the hands of the English.^® So infamous 
and treacherous a proceeding roused the Catholics of France, 
who now becanie ashamed of that inactivity which had suf- 
fered a sect less than a hundredth part of the population 
to sell their country under the blasphemous plea of a 
love of the Gospel. '* Good Bess," with her usual mix- 
ture of hypocrisy and effrontery, sent her proclamations 
into Normandy, declaring that she meant no hostility 
against her " good brother," the King of France, but 
merely to protect his Protestant subjects against the 
tyranny of the House of Guise ; and that her '* good 
brother " ought to be grateful to her for the assistance 
she was lending I This cool and hypocritical insolence 
added fury to the flame. All France could not but recol- 
lect that it was the skilful, the gallant, the patriotic Duke 
of Guise, who had, only five years before, ejected the English 
from Calais, their last hold in France ; and they now saw 
these " sons of the Gospel," as they had the audacity to 
call themselves, bring those same English back again and 
put two French seaports into their hands at once ! Are we 
to wonder at the inextinguishable hatred of the people of 
France against this traitorous sect ? Are we to wonder 



Lingard, History ^ vi., p. 38. 



229 

that they felt a desire to extirpate the whole of so infamous 
a race, who had already sold their country to the utmost of 
their power ? 

276. The French nobility from every province and corner 
of France flew to the aid of their sovereign, whose army 
was commanded by the Constable, Montmorency, with the 
Duke of Guise under him. Conde was at the head of the 
rebel army, having Coligny as a sort of partner in the con- 
cern, and having been joined by the English troops under 
the Earl of Warwick, nephew of *' good Bess's " paramour, 
Dudley, of whom the Protestant clergymen, Heylyn and 
Whitaker, will tell us more than enough by-and-by. The 
first movement of the French against this combined mass 
of hypocrisy, audacity, perfidy and treason, was the 
besieging of Rouen, into which Sir Edward Poynings, 
who had preceded Warwick, had thrown an English rein- 
forcement to assist the faithful " sons of the Gospel." In 
order to encourage the French, the Queen-Mother (Cather- 
ine de Medici), her son the young King Charles (now 
twelve years of age), and the King of Navarre, were 
present at the siege. The latter was mortally wounded 
in the attack, but the Catholics finally took the town by 
assault and put the whole of the garrison to the sword, 
including the English reinforcement seni by Elizabeth.^* 

277. In the meanwhile the brother of Coligny had, by the 
money of Elizabeth, collected together a body of German 
mercenary gospellers and had got them to Orleans, which 
was then the main hold of the Huguenots, while " good 
Bess," in order to act her part faithfully, ordered public 
prayers during three whole days, to implore God's blessing 
**upon her cause and the cause of the Gospel. "^° Thus 



'" Lingard, History, vi., p. 39. "Two hundred Englishmen . . . 
perished in the breach." 

2" Ibid. " Count Oldenburgh was commissioned to levy 12,000 men in 
Germany." 



230 

reinforced by another body of foreigners brought into their 
country, the base traitors, Cond6 and Coligny, first made a 
feint on the side of Paris ; but finding themselves too weak 
on that side, they took their way towards Normandy, in the 
hope of there having the aid of the EngHsh forces. But 
the CathoHcs, still under Montmorency and the Duke of 
Guise, followed the traitors, overtook them at Dreux, com- 
pelled them to fight, took Conde himself prisoner, and 
though Montmorency was taken prisoner by the rebels, the 
Duke of Guise took the chief command and drove the rebel 
Coligny and his army before him, and this too, observe, in 
spite of '* good Bess's " three whole days of prayers.^^ 

278. Nevertheless, Coligny kept the field and pillaged 
Normandy pretty severely. Elizabeth sent him some 
money, and offered to be bound for more if he could get 
any merchants (that is Jews) to lend it him ; but she sent 
him no troops, those under the Earl of Warwick being 
kept safe and sound in the strong fortress of Havre de 
Grace, which place honest and *' good Bess " intended to 
keep, let things go which way they might, which honest 
intention, we shall, however, find defeated in the end. 
Coligny and his ruffians and German mercenary gos- 
pellers cruelly plundered the Normans as far as they could 
extend their arms. The Catholics, now under the Duke 
of Guise, laid siege to Orleans. While this siege was 
going on, one Poltrot, a Huguenot in the pay of Coligny, 
went under the guise of being a deserter from that in- 
veterate rebel chief, and entered into the service of the 
army under the Duke of Guise.*^ In a short time this 
miscreant found the means to assassinate that gallant 
nobleman and distinguished patriot, instigated and indeed 
employed for the express purpose by Coligny, and urged 
on by Beza, " the famous preacher," as Hume calls him, 
but really one of the most infamous of all the '* reform- 

"^^ Lingard, History, vi., p. 39. *^ Ibid.^ p. 43. 



I 



231 

mg " preachers, and perhaps second to none but Luther 
himself. This atrocious deed met afterwards with retalia- 
tion in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, when on Coligny's 
mangled body there might have been placarded the name 
of Poltrot. This wretch had been paid by Coligny, and 
the money had come from honest and sincere " good Queen 
Bess," whom we shall hereafter find plainly accused by 
Whitaker (a clergyman of the Church of England) of plot- 
ting the assassination of her own cousin and finding no 
man in her kingdom base enough to perform the deed. 

279. This foul deed seems to have made Conde ashamed 
of his infamous associate and followers. Ambition had 
made him a rebel, but he had sense of honour enough left 
to make him shudder at the thought of being the leader of 
assassins; and he, with one drop of true blood in him, 
could not think without horror of such a man as the Duke 
of Guise, who had rendered such inestimable services to 
France, being swept from existence by so base a miscreant 
as that whom his late colleague had hired and paid for 
that purpose. If the son of the Duke of Guise could have 
destroyed Coligny and his whole crew, he would have 
been justified in so doing. And yet the world has been 
stunned with the Protestant cries of horror at the death of 
this same Coligny and a small part of his followers. 

280. Conde now sought to get rid of his miscreant asso- 
ciates by proposing, in February, 1563, a pacification, and 
tendering his submission to his sovereign on condition of 
an act of oblivion. Cohgny was included in the amnesty. 
The King granted to the Huguenots permission to practise 
their worship in one town in every bailiwick, and thus were 
all matters settled between the King and his rebellious 
subjects.^^ Sad tidings for "good Queen Bess," who, as 
Whitaker well observes, continually sought her safety in 
the divisions and misery of others. Conde, in his treaty 

" Lingard, History^ vi., p. 43. 



232 

with her, had stipulated not to conclude any peace without 
her consent ; but had she a right to complain of want of 
good faith, — she, who had broken her treaty and her oath 
with Charles IX., and who, in defiance of both, had en- 
tered into a treaty with rebels in open arms against their 
king ? 

281. The French King, wishing to get her troops quietly 
out of Havre de Grace, and finding that she now pretended 
to hold it as a pledge for the surrender of Calais, at the 
end of the eight years offered to renew the treaty of Cateau 
Cambresis, by which Calais was to be restored to England 
in 1567. But she rejected this fair and reasonable pro- 
posal. She had got Havre, no matter how ; and she said 
that ** a bird in hand was worth two in the bush." Find- 
ing, however, that all parties in France were now united 
for the expulsion of the English, she reluctantly gave way. 
She authorised her ambassadors to present a new project 
of treaty ; but by this time the French army, under Mont- 
morency, Conde, Elizabeth's late friend and ally, being 
serving in the army, was on its way to regain Havre by 
force of arms, the King of France being well convinced 
that treaties with Elizabeth were things perfectly vain. 

282. Still, it was not a trifling thing to take Havre out 
of the hands of the English. A great deal of taxes had 
been imposed upon this nation (to say nothing of the 
" prayers "), in order to insure the possession of this place. 
The Earl of Warwick, instead of sending troops to assist 
the Queen's allies, had kept his army at Havre; had with 
six thousand soldiers and seven hundred pioneers rendered 
the place ''impregnable;" had, as soon as he heard that 
the rebellion was at an end, expelled all the French people 
from Havre, to their utter ruin and in direct breach of Eliza- 
beth's treaty with Conde and Coligny.^^ But in spite of all 
this Montmorency was at the end of a short time ready to 

•* Hume, History of England (Murray's reprint), ii., p. 368. 



233 

enter the place by assault, having made his breaches in 
preparation. The Queen-mother and the King were pre- 
sent in the camp, where they had the indescribable pleasure 
to see " good Queen Bess's " general humbly propose to 
surrender the place to its rightful sovereign, without any 
mention of Calais and its territory, and on no condition 
whatever but that of being permitted to return to England 
with the miserable remnant of his army ; ^^ and England, 
after all the treasure and blood expended to gratify the 
malignity of Elizabeth, and after all the just imputations 
of perfidy that she had brought upon it, had to receive that 
remnant, that ratification of disgrace greater than it had 
to support from the day when glorious Alfred finally 
expelled the Danes. And yet this woman is called, or has 
been called, *' Good Queen Bess," and her perfidious and 
butchering reign has been called glorious ! 

283. Great as the mortifications of the Queen now were, 
and great as were the misfortunes of the country brought 
upon it by these her proceedings of hitherto unheard-of 
hypocrisy and breach of faith, we have as yet seen the 
full measure of neither the one nor the other. For 
" glorious and good Bess " had now to sue for peace, and 
with that king with whose rebel subjects she had so 
recently co-operated. Her ambassadors, going with due 
passports, were arrested and imprisoned. She stamped 
and swore, but she swallowed the affront, and took the 
regular steps to cause them to be received at the French 
court, who on their part treated her pressing applications 
with a contemptuous sneer, and suffered many months to 
pass away before they would listen to any terms of peace. 
Smith was one of her envoys, and the other was that same 
Throckmorton who had been her ambassador at Paris, 
and who had been her agent in stirring up Conde and 
Coligny to their rebellion. The former was imprisoned at 

* Lingard, History ^ vi., p. 44. 



234 

Melun, and the latter at Saint Germain's.'"' Smith was 
released upon her application, but Throckmorton was de- 
tained and was made use of for the following curious and, 
to " good Bess," most humiliating purpose. The treaty 
of Cateau Cambresis, which stipulated for the restoration 
of Calais in eight years or the forfeiture of 500,000 crowns 
by the French, contained a stipulation that four French 
noblemen should be held by Elizabeth as hostages for the 
fulfilment of the treaty on the part of France. '* Good 
Bess," by her aiding of the French rebels, had broken this 
treaty, had lost all just claim to Calais, and ought to have 
released the hostages ; but as the Queen very seldom 
did what she ought to, — as she might, almost every day 
of her mischievous life, have with perfect truth repeated 
that part of the Prayer Book ** amended " which says, 
*' we have done those things which we ought not to do 
and have left undone those things which we ought to 
do," — so this " good " woman had kept the hostages, 
though she had forfeited all just claim to that for the ful- 
filment of which they had been put into her hands. Now, 
however, the French had got a " bird in hand " too. They 
had got Throckmorton, their old enemy, and he had got 
a large quantity of the Queen's horrible secrets locked up 
in his breast ! So that, after long discussions, during 
which Throckmorton gave very significant signs of his 
determination not to end his days in prison without taking 
revenge of some sort on his merciless employer, the 
**good" woman agreed to exchange the four French 
noblemen for him ; and as a quarter of a loaf was better 
than no bread, to take 125,000 crowns for the relinquish- 
ment of Calais to France in perpetuity !^' 

284. Thus, then, it was " good Queen Bess " after all, 
glorious and Protestant Bess, that plucked this jewel from 
the English crown I Nor was this the only signal conse- 



] 



^ Lingard, History ^ vi., p. 44. ^ Ibid,^ p. 44. 



235 

quence of her unhallowed and unprincipled treaty and 
intrigues with the French rebels. The plague, which had 
got into the garrison of Havre de Grace, and which had 
left Warwick with only about two thousand out of his 
seven thousand men, this dreadful disease was brought 
by that miserable remnant of infected beings to England, 
where Hume himself allows that it swept off great mul- 
titudes, '* especially in London, where above twenty 
thousand persons died of it in one year ! "^^ Thus was the 
nation heavily taxed, afflicted with war, afflicted with 
pestilence ; thus were thousands upon thousands of Eng- 
lish people destroyed or ruined or rendered miserable, 
merely to gratify this proud and malignant woman, who 
thought that she could never be safe until all the world 
joined in her flagrant apostacy. Thus, and merely for 
this same reason, was Calais surrendered for ever ; Calais, 
the proudest possession of England ; Calais, one of the 
two keys to the northern seas ; Calais, that had been won 
by our Catholic forefathers two hundred years before ; 
Calais, which they would have no more thought of yield- 
ing to France than they would have thought of yielding 
Dover ; Calais, the bare idea of a possibility of losing 
which had broken the heart of the honest, the virtuous, 
the patriotic and most calumniated Mary ! 

285. It is surprising what baseness Hume discovers in 
treating of the whole of this important series of trans- 
actions ; how he glosses over all the breaches of faith and 
of oath on the part of Elizabeth ; how he lets pass without 
censure the flagrant and malignant treason of the rebels, 
and even how he insinuates apologies for them ; how he 
skips by the rare fidelity of Philip to his engagements ; 
how he praises the black-hearted Coligny, while he almost 
censures Conde for seeking peace after the assassination of 
the Duke of Guise ; how he wholly suppresses the deep 

^ Hume, Hhtoryy ii.^ 368. 



236 

humiliations of England in the case of Smith and Throck« 
morton ; how he makes the last bill of sale 220,000, instead 
of the fourth part of 500,000 ; ^^ how he passes over the 
loss of Calais for ever as nothing in " good Bess," though 
he had made the temporary loss of it everything in Mary ; 
but, above all the rest, how he constantly aims his 
malignity at that skilful, brave, faithful, and patriotic 
nobleman, the Duke of Guise, while he extols Conde as 
long as he was a rebel and a traitor engaged in selling his 
country, and how he lauds the inveterate and treacherous 
Coligny to the last hour of that traitor's life. 

286. Is there any man who does not see the vast im- 
portance of Calais and its territory ? Is there any man 
who does not see how desirable it would be to us to have 
it now ? Is there an Englishman who does not lament the 
loss of it ? And is it not clear as the sun at noonday 
that it was lost for ever by " good Bess's " perfidy in 
joining the rebels of France ? If when those rebels were 
formidable to their sovereign she had pressed, him to 
restore Calais at once and to take an equivalent for such 
anticipated restoration, is it not obvious that he would 
have consented rather than risk her displeasure at such a 
moment ? And what is the apology that Hume makes for 
her conduct in joining the rebels ? " Elizabeth, besides 
the general and essential interest of supporting the Pro- 
testants and opposing the rapid progress of her enemy, 
the Duke of Guise " (how was he her enemy ?), "had other 
motives which engaged her to accept this proposal. When 
she concluded the peace of Cateau Cambresis she had 
good reason to foresee that France would never volun- 
tarily fulfil the article with regard to the restitution of 
Calais, and many subsequent incidents tended to confirm 
this suspicion. Considerable sums of money had been laid 
out on the fortifications, long leases had been granted of 

* Hume, History^ ii., p. 368. 



237 

the lands, and many inhabitants had been encouraged to 
build and settle there by assurances that Calais would 
never be restored to the English. The Queen therefore 
very wisely concluded that, could she get possession of 
Havre, a place which commanded the mouth of the Seine, 
and was of much greater importance than Calais, she 
should easily constrain the French to execute the treaty, 
and should have the glory of restoring to the crown that 
ancient possession which was so much the favourite of 
the nation." «» 

287. Away then go at once all her professions of desire 
to defend the "cause of the Gospel; " she is a hypocrite 
the most profound at once ; she breaks faith with the King 
of France and with the rebels too. But if she really fore- 
saw that the French would not voluntarily fulfil the treaty 
of Cateau Cambresis, why did she conclude it, when Philip 
was ready to aid her in compelling France to restore Calais 
at once ? And as to the " subsequent incidents " which 
had confirmed her suspicions, why should not the French 
government repair the fortifications, and why should they 
not give " assurances that the territory would never be 
restored to the English," seeing that she had bargained 
for the perpetual surrender of 500,000 crowns ? The 
French meant, doubtless, to pay the money at the end of 
the eight years. They never, after she had rejected the 
offer of Philip, intended to give up Calais ; that every 
body knew, and nobody better than the Queen herself: she 
had hostages for the payment of the money, and she held 
those hostages after she had received Havre from the 
rebels as a security for the payment of that money ! She 
had, she thought, two birds in the hand ; but though she 
"concluded very wisely," both birds escaped, she out- 
witted and overreached herself, and the nation has to 
this day to lament the consequences of her selfishness, 
bad faith and atrocious perfidy. 

•" Hume, History t ii., p. 363. 



238 

288. I should now proceed to follow Elizabeth and her 
worthy friend Coligny down to the date of the massacre of 
Saint Bartholomew, which was a sort of wholesale of the 
same work that ** good Bess " carried on in detail ; but I 
have filled my paper, and I now see that it will be impos- 
sible for me to do anything like justice to my subject 
without stretching my little work further than I intended. 



239 



CHAPTER X. 

289. Though the massacre of Saint Bartholomew took 
place in France, yet it has formed so fertile a source of 
calumny against the religion of our fathers, it has served 
as a pretence with Protestant historians to justify or 
palliate so many atrocities on the part of their divers sects, 
and the Queen of England and her ministers had so great 
a hand in first producing it and then in punishing Catholics 
under pretence of avenging it, that it is necessary for me 
to give an account of it. 

290. We have seen in the paragraphs from 273 to 281 
the treacherous works of Coligny, and in paragraph 278 we 
have seen that this pretended saint basely caused that 
gallant and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of Guise, to be 
assassinated. But in assassinating this nobleman the 
wretch did not take off the whole of his family. There 
was a son left to avenge that father, and the just ven- 
geance of this son the treacherous Coligny had to feel. 
We have seen that peace had taken place between the 
French King and his rebellious subjects, but Coligny had 
all along discovered that his treacherous designs only 
slept. The King was making a progress through the 
kingdom about four years after the pacification :^ a plot 
was formed by Coligny and his associates to kill or seize 
him ; but by riding fourteen hours without getting off his 
horse, and without food or drink, he escaped and got safe 

'September, 1567. 



240 

to Paris.' Another civil war soon broke out, followed by 
another pacification ; but such had been the barbarities 
committed on both sides that there could be, and there 
was, no real forgiveness. The Protestants had been full 
as sanguinary as the Catholics ; and, which has been re- 
marked even by their own historians, their conduct was 
frequently, not to say uniformly, characterized by plunder- 
ing and by hypocrisy and perfidy unknown to their 
enemies. 

291. During this pacification Coligny had, by the deepest 
dissimulation, endeavoured to worm himself into favour 
with the young King ; and upon the occasion of a marriage 
between the King's sister and the young King of Navarre 
(afterwards the famous Henry IV.), Coligny, who, Conde 
being now dead,^ was become the chief of his sect, came 
to Paris with a company of his Protestant adherents to 
partake in the celebration, and that, too, at the King's 
invitation. After he had been there a day or two, some 
one shot at him in the street with a blunderbuss and 
wounded him in two or three places, but not dangerously.^ 
His partisans ascribed this to the young Duke of Guise, 
though no proof has ever been produced to support the 
assertion.^ They, however, got about their leader and 
threatened revenge, as was very natural. Taking this 
for the ground of their justification, the court resolved to 

'^ Lingard, History, vi., p. 113. " The English ambassador, Norris, had 
been deeply implicated in the arrangement of this atrocious and in reality 
unprovoked attempt ; but though the queen, as a sovereign, condemned the 
outrage, Cecil required Norris to ' comfort ' the insurgents and exhort 
them to persevere." 

^ Conde fell in the battle of Jarnac, March 14, 1569. 

* August 22, 1572. 

* Lingard, vL, p. 138, says: — "The public voice attributed the attempt 
to the Duke of Guise in revenge of the murder of his father at the siege of 
Orleans ; it had proceeded in reality (and was so suspected by Coligni him- 
self) from Catherine, the Queen-mother." 



241 

anticipate the blow, and on Sunday, August 24, 1572, it 
being Saint Bartholomew's day, they put their design in 
execution. There was great difficulty in prevailing upon 
the young King to give his consent; but at last, by the 
representations and entreaties of his mother, those of the 
Duke of Anjou, his brother, and those of the Duke of 
Guise, he was prevailed upon. The dreadful orders were 
given, at the appointed moment the signal was made, the 
Duke of Guise, with a band of followers, rushed to and 
broke open the house of Coligny, whose dead body was 
soon thrown out of the window into the street. The 
people of Paris, who mortally hated the Protestants, and 
who could not have forgotten Coligny's having put the 
English in possession of Dieppe and Havre ; who could 
not have forgotten that while the old enemy of France 
was thus again brought into the country by Coligny and 
his Protestants, this same traitor and his sect had basely 
assassinated that brave nobleman, the late Duke of Guise, 
who had driven the English from their last hold, Calais, 
and who had been assassinated at the very moment when 
I he was endeavouring to drive this old enemy from Havre, 
into which this Coligny and his sect had brought that 
enemy ; the people of Paris could not but remember these 
things, and remembering them they could not but hold 
Coligny and his sect in detestation indescribable. Besides 
this there were few of them, some one or more of whose 
relations had not perished, or suffered in some way or 
other from the plunderings or butcheries of these maraud- 
ing and murdering Calvinists, whose creed taught them 
that good works were unavailing, and that no deeds, how- 
ever base or bloody, could bar their way to salvation. 
These " Protestants " as they were called, bore no more 
resemblance to Protestants of the present day than the 
wasp bears a resemblance to the bee. That name then 
was, and it was justly, synonymous with banditti, that is, 
robber and murderer ; and the persons bearing it had been, 
16 



242 

by becoming the willing tool of every ambitious rebel, a 
greater scourge to France than foreign war, pestilence and 
famine united. 

292. Considering these things, and taking into view that 
the people, always ready to suspect, even beyond the limits 
of reason, heard the cry of " treason " on all sides, is it any 
wonder that they fell upon the followers of Coligny, and 
that they spared none of the sect that they were able to 
destroy ? When we consider these things, and especially 
when we see the son of the assassinated Duke of Guise lead 
the way, is it not a most monstrous violation of truth to* 
ascribe this massacre to the principles of the Catholic 
religion ? 

293. The massacre at Paris very far exceeded the wishes 
of the court, and orders were instantly despatched to the 
great towns in the provinces to prevent similar scenes.^ 
Such scenes took place, however, in several places; but 
though by some Protestant writers the whole number of 
persons killed has been made to amount to a hundred thou- 
sand, an account pubUshed in 1582, and made up from 
accounts collected from the ministers in the different towns, 
made the number, for all France, amount to only 786 per- 
sons ! Dr. Lingard, with his usual fairness, says : — *' If 
we double this number we shall not be far from the real 
amount."' The Protestant writers began at 100,000, then 
fell to 70,000, then to 30,000, then to 20,000, then to 15,000, 
and at last to 10,000. All in round numbers ! One of 
them, in an hour of great indiscretion, ventured upon 
obtaining returns of names from the ministers themselves, 
ind then out came the 786 persons in the whole !® 

294. A number truly horrible to think of, but a number 

" Lingard, vi., p. 138. For a more detailed account of the massacre 
see note T. in vol. viii. (third edition), pp. 515 seqq. 

' History^ note T, ui supra. 

• Martyrologe des Calvinistes^ quoted by Ch. Barth^lemy, Mensonges 
HisioriqueSt I ere serie, p. 220. Lingard, History y note T, ui supra. 



243 

not half so great as that of those English Catholics whom 
the *' good Queen Bess " had even at this time (the four- 
teenth year of her reign) caused to be ripped up, racked 
till the bones came out of their sockets, or caused to be 
despatched or to die in prison or in exile ; and this, too, 
observe, not for rebellions, treasons, robberies and assas- 
sinations, like those of Coligny and his followers, but simply 
and solely for adhering to the religion of their and her 
fathers, which religion she had openly practised for years, 
and to which religion she had most solemnly sworn that 
she sincerely belonged ! The annals of hypocrisy conjoined 
with impudence afford nothing to equal her behaviour upon 
the occasion of the St. Bartholomew. She was daily rack- 
ing people nearly to death to get secrets from them, she 
was daily persecuting women as well as men for saying or 
hearing that Mass for the celebration of which the churches 
of England had been erected, she was daily mutilating, 
racking and butchering her own innocent and conscien- 
tious subjects ; and yet she and her court women, when 
the French ambassador came with the King of France's 
explanation of the cause of the massacre, received him in 
deep mourning and with all the marks of disapprobation. 
But when she remonstrated with her '' good brother," the 
King of France, and added her hope that he would be 
indulgent to his Protestant subjects, her hypocrisy carried 
her a little too far ; for the Queen-mother, in her answer, 
observed that as to this matter her son could not take a 
safer guide than his " good sister of England," and that, 
while like her he forced no man's conscience, like her he 
was resolved to suffer no man to practise any religion but 
that which he himself practised.^ The French Queen- 
mother was still short of " good Betsy's " mark, for she 
not only punished the practice of all religion but her own, 
she, moreover, punished people for not practising her reli- 

* Lingard, History ^ vi., p. 139. 



244 

gion, though she herself was a notorious apostate, and that, 
too, from motives as notoriously selfish. 

295. But there is a tail-piece which most admirably 
elucidates '* good Betsy's " sincerity upon this memorable 
occasion, and also that same quality in her which induced 
her to profess that she wished to live and die a virgin 
queen. The Parliament and her ministers, anxious for 
an undisputed succession, and anxious also to keep out 
the Scotch branch of the royal family, urged her several 
times to marry. She always rejected their advice. Her 
amours with Leicester, of whom we shall see enough 
by-and-by, were open and notorious, and have been most 
amply detailed by many Protestant historians, some of 
whom have been clergymen of the Church of England ; 
it is, moreover, well-known that these amours became the 
subject of a play acted in the reign of Charles II. She 
was now, at the time of the St. Bartholomew, in the thirty- 
ninth year of her age, and she was, as she long had been, 
leading with Leicester the life that I have alluded to. 
Ten years afterwards, whether from the advanced age 
of Leicester or from some other cause, she became bent 
on wedlock ; and being now forty-nine years of age, 
there was to be sure no time to be lost in providing an 
hereditary successor to her throne. She had, in the 
thirteenth year of her reign, assented to an act that 
was passed, which secured the crown to her " natural 
issue," by which any offspring that she might have by 
anybody became heir to the throne; and it was by the 
same act made high treason to deny that such issue 
was heir to it. This act, which is still in the Statute- 
Book, 13 Eliz., chap, i, sec. 2, is a proof of the most 
hardened profligacy that ever was witnessed in woman ; 
and it is surprising that such a mark of apparent national 
abjectness and infamy should have been suffered to remain 
in black and white to this day. However, at forty-nine 
the queen resolved to lead a married life ; and as her 



245 

father, whom she so much resembled, always looked out 
for a young wife, so Elizabeth looked out for a young 
husband ; and in order to convince the world of the 
sincerity of her horror at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
whom should she fix on as a companion for life, whom 
should she want to take to her arms, but the Duke of 
Anjou, brother of Charles IX., and one of the perpetrators 
of those bloody deeds on account of which she and her 
court ladies had gone into mourning ! The duke was not 
handsome, but he had what the French call la heaute du 
diahle ; he was young, only twenty-eight years of age. 
Her ministers and the nation, who saw all the dangers of 
such a match to the independence of their country, pro- 
tested against it most vehemently, and finally deterred her 
from it ; ^" but a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had 
written and published a pamphlet against the marriage, 
was prosecuted and had his right hand chopped off for 
this public-spirited effort in assisting to save England from 
the ruin about to be brought upon it for the mere gratifi- 
cation of the appetite of a gross, libidinous, nasty, shame- 
less old woman." It was said of her father, who began the 
" Reformation," that '* he spared no man in his anger and 
no woman in his lust : " the very same in substance, with 
a little change of the terms, might be said of his daughter, 
who completed that " Reformation ; " and something 
approaching to the same degree of wickedness might be 
justly ascribed to almost every one who acted a conspicuous 

'" The lords of the Council were unable to agree, after deliberating the 
greater part of a week, on the question of this marriage (Lingard, 
vi., p. 150). 

" Lingard, vi., p. 153. ** The author, publisher and printer were, in 
virtue * of a good and necessarye lawe ' passed in the first year of the 
Queen, condemned in the court of the King's Bench to lose their right 
hands and to be imprisoned during the royal pleasure. The printer was 
pardoned ; the other two, having petitioned in vain for mercy, suffered 
their punishment in the market-place of Westminster." 



246 

part in bringing about that, to England, impoverishing 
and degrading event. 

296. Before we come to the three other great trans- 
actions of the long reign of this woman, her foul murder 
of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, her war with Spain, 
and her scourging of Ireland, which unhappy country still 
bears the marks of the scorpion lash ; before we come to 
these it will be necessary to make ourselves acquainted 
with the names and characters of some of her principal 
advisers and co-operators, because, unless we do this, we 
shall hardly be able to comprehend many things which we 
ought nevertheless to carry along clearly in our minds. 

297. Leicester was her favourite, both in council and in 
the field. Doctor Heylyn describes him in these words : ^^ 
" Sir Robert Dudley, the second son of the Duke of 
Northumberland " (the odious traitor executed in the last 
reign), she made, soon after she came to the throne, Lord 
Denbigh and Earl of Leicester, having before made him 
her Master of Horse, Chancellor of the University of 
Oxford, and a Knight of the Garter ; and she now gave 
him the fair manor of Denbigh, with more gentlemen 
owing suit and service to it than any other in England in 
the hands of a subject, adding even to this the goodly 
castle and manor of Kenilworth. Advanced to this height, 
he engrossed unto himself the disposing of all offices in 
court and state and of all preferments in the church ; 
proving, in fine, so unappeasable in his malice and so 
insatiable in his lusts, so sacrilegious in his rapines, so 
false in promises and so treacherous in point of trust, and 
finally, so destructive of the lives and properties of parti- 
cular persons, that his little finger lay far heavier on the 
English subjects than the loins of all the favourites of the 
two last kings ; " and, mind, those " two kings " were the 
plundering and confiscating Henry VHL and Edward VL 

" Ecdesia Reslaurata^ Elizabeth, pp. 167-168. 



247 

"And that his monstrous vices might either be connived 
at or not complained of, he cloaks them with a seeming 
zeal for true religion, and made himself the head of the 
Puritan faction, who spared no pains in setting forth his 
praises ; nor was he wanting to caress them after such 
manner as he found most agreeable to these holy hypo- 
crites, using no other language in his speech and letters than 
the pure- Scripture phrase, in which he was as dexterous 
as if he had received the same inspirations as the sacred 
penman." ^^ We must bear in mind that this character 
is drawn by a Doctor of the Church of England (Elizabeth's 
own Church) in a work dedicated by permission to King 
Charles II. She, beyond all doubt, meant to marry 
Leicester, who had, as all the world believed, murdered 
his own wife to make way for the match. She was pre- 
vented from marrying him by the reports from her 
ambassadors of what was said about this odious proceed- 
ing in foreign courts, and also by the remonstrances of her 
other ministers. Yet, after all these things, this man, or 
rather this monster, continued to possess all his power 
and his emoluments and all his favour with the Queen to 
the last day of his life, which ended in 1588, after thirty 
years of plundering and oppressing the people of England. 
This was a " reformer " of religion truly worthy of being 
enrolled with Henry VIII., Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, 
and " good Queen Bess." 

298. Sir William Cecil was her next man. He was her 
Secretary of State, but she afterwards made him a lord, 
under the title of Burleigh, and also made him Lord 
Treasurer. He had been a Protestant in the reign of 
Edward the Sixth, when he was Secretary, first under the 
Protector Somerset, who, when Dudley overpowered him, 
was abandoned by Cecil, who took to the latter and was 
the very man that drew up the treasonable instrument by 

" Ecclesia Restaur ata^ Elizabeth, p. 168. 



248 

which Edward on his death-bed disinherited his sisters, 
Mary and Elizabeth. Pardoned for his treason by Mary 
he became a most zealous Catholic, and was, amongst 
others, a volunteer to go over to Brussels to conduct 
Cardinal Pole to England.^^ But the wind having changed, 
he became Protestant again and Secretary of State to 
Elizabeth, who never cared anything about the character 
or principles of those she employed, so that they did but 
answer her selfish ends. This Cecil, who was a man of 
extraordinary abilities, and of still greater prudence and 
cunning, was the chief prop of her throne for nearly forty 
of the forty-three 3^ears of her reign. He died in 1598, in 
the 77th year of his age ; and if success in unprincipled 
artifice, if fertility in cunning devices, if the obtaining of 
one's ends without any regard to the means, if in this 
pursuit sincerity be to be set at nought, and truth, law, 
justice and mercy to be trampled under foot, if, so that 
you succeed in your end, apostacy, forgery, perjury, and 
the shedding of innocent blood be thought nothing of, this 
Cecil was certainly the greatest statesman that everlived.^^ 
Above all others he was confided in by the Queen, who, 
when he grew old and feeble in his, limbs, used to make 
him sit in her presence, saying in her accustomed mas- 
culine and emphatical style : " I have you not for your 
weak legs, but for your strong head." 

299. Francis Walsingham became Secretary of State 
after Cecil, but he had been employed by the Queen 
almost from the beginning of her reign. He had been her 
ambassador at several courts, had negotiated many treaties, 
was an exceedingly prudent and cunning man, and wholly 



"Lingard, v., p. 222 (1554). 

'^Macaulay {Lord Burleigh and his Tifnes, Essays, ed. , 1868, i., p. 
223), says: **The deep stain upon his (Burleigh's) memory is, that forj 
differences of opinion for which he would risk nothing himself, he, in the 
day of his power, took away without scruple the lives of others." 



249 

destitute of all care about means so that he carried his 
end. He was said to have fifty-three agents and eighteep 
real spies in foreign courts. He was a most bitter and 
inflexible persecutor of the Catholics ; but before his death, 
which took place in 1590, he had to feel himself a little of 
that tyranny and ingratitude and that want of mercy 
which he had so long mainly assisted to make so many 
innocent persons feel. 

300. Paulet St. John, Marquis of Winchester. This 
was not a statesman. He, like many more, was a backer- 
on. He presided at trials, and did other such-like work. 
These are unworthy of particular notice here, and Paulet 
is named merely as a specimen of the character and con- 
duct of the makers and supporters of the famous " Refor- 
mation." This Paulet (the first noble of the family) was, 
at his outset, steward to the bishop of Winchester in the 
time of Bishop Fox, in the reign of Henry VH. He was 
by Henry VHI. made treasurer of the king's household, 
and zealously entering into all the views of that famous 
" Defender of the Faith," he was made Lord St. John. 
He was one of those famous executors who were to carry 
into effect the will of Henry VHI. Though the king had 
enjoined on these men to maintain his sort of half Catholic 
religion, Paulet now, in the reign of Edward, became a 
zealous Protestant and continued to enjoy all his offices 
and emoluments, besides getting some new grants from 
the further spoils of the church and poor. Seeing that 
Dudley was about to supplant Somerset, which he finally 
did, Paulet joined Dudley, and actually presided at the 
trial and passed sentence of death on Somerset, *' whose 
very name," says Dr. Milner, " had a little more than 
two years before caused him to tremble." Dudley made 
him first Earl of Wiltshire and then Marquis of Winches- 
ter, and gave him the palace of the bishop of Winchester 
at Bishop's Waltham, together with other spoils of that 
bishopric. When Mary came, which was ahuost direcily 



250 

afterwards, he became once more a Catholic, and con- 
tinued to hold and enjoy all his offices and emoluments. 
Not only a Catholic, but a most furious Catholic, and the 
most active and vigorous of all the persecutors of those 
very Protestants with whom he had made it his boast to 
join in communion only about two years before ! We 
have heard a great deal about the cruelties of the " bloody 
Bishop Bonner," but nobody ever tells us that this Mar- 
quis of Winchester, as president of the council, repeatedly 
reprimanded Bonner in very severe terms for want of zeal 
and diligence in sending Protestants to the stake ! Fox 
says that "of the council, the most active in these prosecu- 
tions was the Marquis of Winchester." But now, Mary 
being dead and Elizabeth being resolved to extirpate the 
Catholics, Paulet instantly became a Protestant again, a 
most cruel persecutor of the Catholics, president on several 
commissions for condemning them to death, and he was in 
such high favour with " good Bess " that she said were 
he not so very old as he was she would prefer him as a 
husband to any man in her dominions. He died in the 
thirteenth year of her reign, at the age of 97, having kept 
in place during the reigns of five sovereigns, and having 
made four changes in his religion to correspond with the 
changes made by four out of the five. A French historian 
says that Paulet, being asked how he had been able to 
get through so many storms, not only unhurt but rising 
all the while, answered : " En etant un saule et non pas 
un chene," " by being a willow and not an oak." 

301. Such were the tools with which Elizabeth had to 
work ; and we have now to see in what manner they all 
worked with regard to Mary Stuart, the celebrated and 
unfortunate Queen of the Scotch. Without going into her 
history it is impossible to make it clearly appear how 
Elizabeth was able to establish the Protestant religion 
in England in spite of the people of England, for it was, 
in fact, in spite of almost the whole of the people of all 



251 

ranks and degrees. She actually butchered some hundreds 
of them, she put many and many hundreds of them to 
the rack, she killed in various ways many thousands, and 
she reduced to absolute beggary as many as made the 
population of one of the smaller counties of England, to 
say nothing at present of that great slaughter-house, 
Ireland. It is impossible for us to see how she came to be 
able to do this ; how she came to be able to get the Parlia- 
ment to do the many monstrous things that they did ; how 
they, without any force, indeed, came to do such barefaced 
things as to provide that any offspring she might have 
should inherit the throne, and to make it high treason to 
deny that such offspring was rightful heir to the throne. 
It is impossible to account for her being able to exist in 
England after that act of indelible infamy, the murder of 
Mary Stuart. It is impossible for us to see these things 
in their causes unless we make ourselves acquainted with 
the history of Mary, and thereby show how the English 
were influenced at this most interesting period the transac- 
tions of which were so decisive as to the fate of the Catholic 
religion in England. 

302. Mary Stuart, born in 1542 (nine years after the 
birth of Elizabeth), was daughter of James V., king of 
Scotland, and of Mary of Lorraine, sister of that brave 
and patriotic nobleman the Duke of Guise, who, as we have 
seen, was so basely murdered by the vile traitor Coligny. 
Mary Stuart's father died when she was only eight days 
old, so that she became the reigning queen of Scotland while 
in the cradle. Her father (James V.) was the son of James 
IV. and Margaret, the eldest sister of Henry VIII. This 
*' Defender of the Faith " wished Mary Stuart to be 
betrothed to his son Edward, and by that means to add 
Scotland to the dominions of England. The family of 
Guise were too deep for the old " Defender." Mary Stuart 
(a regency having been settled in Scotland) was taken to 
France, where she had her education, and where her heart 



252 

seemed to remain all her life. The French, in order tc 
secure Scotland to themselves as a constant ally against 
England, got Mary to be betrothed to Francis, Dauphin 
of France, son and successor of Henry II., King of France. 
She, at the age of seventeen years, was married to him, 
who was two years younger than herself, in 1558, the very 
year that Elizabeth mounted the throne of England. 

303. That very thing now took place which Henry had 
been so much afraid of, and which, indeed, had been the 
dread of his councillors and his people. Edward was dead. 
Queen Mary was dead ; and as Elizabeth was a bastard, 
both in law and in fact, Mary Stuart was the heiress to 
the throne of England, and she was now the wife of the 
immediate heir to the king of France. Nothing could be 
so fortunate for Elizabeth. The nation had no choice but 
one ; to take her and uphold her, or to become a great 
province of France. If Elizabeth had died at this time, 
or had died before her sister Mary, England must have 
been degraded thus, or it must have created a new dynasty 
or become a republic. Therefore it was that all men, 
whether Catholics or Protestants, were for the placing and 
supporting of Elizabeth on the throne, and for setting 
aside Mary Stuart, though unquestionably she was the 
lawful heiress to the crown of England. 

304. As if purposely to add to the weight of this motive, 
of itself weighty enough, Henry II., King of France, died 
in eight months after Elizabeth's accession ; so that Mary 
Stuart was now, 1559, Queen-consort of France, Queen of 
Scotland, and called herself Queen of England ; she and 
her husband bore the" arms of England along with those 
of France and Scotland, and the Pope had refused to 
acknowledge the right of Elizabeth to the English throne. 
Thus, as Henry VIII. had foreseen when he made his will 
setting aside the Scotch branch of his family, was England 
actually transferred to the dominion of France, unless the 
nation set at nought the decision of the Pope and sup- 
ported Elizabeth. 



253 

305. This was the real cause of Elizabeth's success in 
her work of extirpating the Catholic religion. According 
to the decision of the head of the Catholic Church Eliza- 
beth was an usurper ; if she were an usurper she ought to 
be set aside ; if she were set aside, Mary Stuart and the King 
of France became Queen and King of England ; if they be- 
came Queen and King of England, England became a mere 
province ruled by Scotchmen and Frenchmen, the bare idea 
of which was quite sufficient to put every drop of English 
blood in motion. All men, therefore, of all ranks in life, 
whether Protestants or Catholics, were for Elizabeth. To 
preserve her life became an object dear to all her people ; 
and though her cruelties did, in one or two instances, arm 
Catholics against her life as a body, they were as loyal to 
her as her Protestant subjects, and even when she was 
executing them they, without a single exception, declared 
her to be their lawful queen. Therefore, though the deci- 
sion of the Pope was perfectly honest and just in itself, 
that decision was, in its obvious and inevitable conse- 
quences, rendered, by a combination of circumstances, so 
hostile to the greatness, the laws, the liberties and the 
laudable pride of Englishmen, that they were reduced to 
the absolute necessity of setting his decision at nought or 
of surrendering their very name as a nation. But observe, 
by-the-by, this dilemma and all the dangers and sufferings 
that it produced arose entirely out of the " Reformation." 
Had Henry VHI. listened to Sir Thomas More and Bishop 
Fisher, there would have been no obstacle to the marrying 
of his son with Mary Stuart ; and besides, he would have 
had no children whose legitimacy could have been disputed, 
and in all human probability several children to be in 
lawful succession heirs to the throne of England. 

306. Here we have the great, and indeed, the only 
cause of Elizabeth's success in rooting out the Catholic 
religion. Her people were ninety-nine hundredths of 



254 

them Catholics." They had shown this clearly at the 
accession of her sister Mary. Elizabeth was as great a 
tyrant as ever lived, she was the most cruel of women, her 
disgusting amours were notorious, yet she was the most 
popular sovereign that had ever reigned since the days of 
Alfred, and we have thousands of proofs that her people of 
all ranks and degrees felt a most anxious interest in every- 
thing affecting her life or her health. Effects like this do 
not come from ordinary causes. Her treatment of great 
masses of her people, her almost unparalleled cruelties, 
her flagrant falsehoods, her haughtiness, her insolence, 
and her lewd life, were naturally calculated to make her 
detested and to make her people pray for anything that 
might rid them of her. But they saw nothing but her 
between them and subjection to foreigners, a thing which 
they had always most laudably held in the greatest abhor- 
rence. Hence it was that the Parliament, when they 
could not prevail upon her to marry, passed an act to 
make any offspring (** natural issue ") of hers lawful heir 
to the throne. Whitaker (a clergyman of the Church of 
England) calls this a most infamous act. It was, in itself, 
an infamous act ; but that abjectness in the nation which 
it now, at first sight, appears to denote, disappears when 
we consider well what I have stated above. To be pre- 
served from Mary Stuart, from the mastership of the 



'" Macaulay, Essays (ed. 1868), i., p. 230, says : "We possess no data 
which will enable us to compare with exactness the force of the two sects. 
. . . Dr. Lingard is of opinion that the Catholics were one half of the 
nation in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Rush ton says that when 
Elizabeth came to the throne the Catholics were two-thirds of the nation and 
the Protestants only one-third. . . . The account which Cardinal Benti- 
voglio gave of the state of religion in England well deserves consideration. 
The zealous Catholics he reckoned at one-thirtieth part of the nation. The 
people who would without the least scruple become Catholics, if the Catholic 
religion were established, he estimated at four-fifths of the nation. W« 
{i,e.f Macaulay) believe this account to have been very near the truth." 



255 

Scotch and the French, was at that time the great object 
of anxiety with the English nation. Hume, whose head 
always runs upon something hostile to the Catholic religion, 
ascribes Elizabeth's popularity to the dislike that her 
people had to what he calls the ** Roman superstition." 
Whitaker ascribes the extirpation of the Catholic religion 
to the choice of her people and not to her. The Catholic 
writers ascribe it to her cruelties, and they are right so far ; 
but they do not, as I have endeavoured to do, show how it 
came to pass that those numerous and unparalleled cruelties 
came to be perpetrated with impunity to her and her 
ministers. The question with the nation was, in short, 
the Protestant religion, Elizabeth, and independence, or 
the Catholic religion, Mary Stuart, and subjection to 
foreigners. They decided for the former ; and hence all the 
calamities and the final tragical end of the latter lady. 

307. Mary Stuart was in the year 1559, as we have seen 
in paragraph 303, on the highest pinnacle of earthly glory. 
Queen-consort of France, Queen-regnant of Scotland, 
Queen in lawful right of England, and was besides deemed 
one of the most beautiful women in the whole world. Never 
was fall like that of this queen. Her husband, Francis H., 
died seventeen months after his accession, and was 
succeeded by Charles IX., then not more than three 
years old. Her husband's mother, Catherine de Medici, 
soon convinced her that to be any thing she must return 
to Scotland. To Scotland she returned with a heavy 
heart, anticipating very little quiet in a country which was 
plunged in all the horrors of the " Reformation " even 
more deeply than England had been. Her long minority, 
together with her absence from her dominions, had given 
rise to contending factions of nobles, who alternately 
triumphed over each other, and who kept the country 
in a state of almost incessant civil war, accompanied with 
deeds of perfidy and ferocity of which there is scarcely any 
parallel to be found in history, ancient or modern. Added 



2S6 

to this was the work of the new saints, who carried the 
work of *' reformation " much further than in England. 
The famous John Knox, an apostate monk, whom Dr. 
Johnson cahs the " Ruffian of the Reformation," was 
leader of the " holy hypocrites " (as Dr. Heylyn calls them) 
in Scotland. Mary, who had been bred a Catholic, and 
who had almost been deified in the court of France, was 
not likely to lead a happy life amongst people like these. 

308. All this, however, Elizabeth and her ministers and 
(for let us have no disguise) the English people saw with 
great and ungenerous satisfaction. There was, for the 
present at least, an end to the danger from the union of 
Scotland with France. But Mary Stuart might marry 
again. There were the powerful family of Guise, her near 
relations; and she was still a formidable person, especially 
to Elizabeth. If Mary had been a man Elizabeth would 
certainly have married her; but here was a difficulty too 
great even for Cecil to overcome. The English Queen soon 
began to stir up factions and rebellions against her cousin ; 
and, indeed, by her intrigues with the religious factions 
and with the aspiring nobles, she became in a short time, 
with the aid of money (a drug of infallible effect with the 
Scotch reformers), more the real ruler of Scotland than 
poor Mary was." She had for the greater part of her 
whole reign always a band of one faction or the other 
at or about her court. Her object was to keep Mary 
from possessing any real power, and to destroy her if by 
any means short of detectable murder she could effect that 
purpose. 

'^ The policy of Cecil in assisting to foment the discontent of the Scotch 
reftjrniing party is described by Lingard, History (6th ed.), vi., p. 12, seqq. 
The Commissioners in the Scottish Marches were instructed to urge the 
Scots to hostilities against their sovereign, *' to supply them with money, to 
promise them every kind of aid which could be furnished without a mani- 
fest breach of the peace between the two queens, and to induce them, it 
It were possible, to depose Mary " {ibid.^ p, 17). 



I 



257 

309. In 1565, about three years after the return of Mary 
to Scotland, she was married to Henry Stuart, Earl of 
Darniey, her cousin, in which she overreached the Queen 
of England, who, fearing that a visible heir to her own 
throne (as it actually happened) might come from this 
marriage, took desperate measures to prevent it ; but those 
measures came too late. Darniey, though young and hand- 
some, proved to be a very foolish and disagreeable husband, 
and he was a Protestant into the bargain. She soon 
treated him with great contempt, suffered him to have 
no real authority, and, in fact, as good as banished him 
from her court and disowned him. Darniey sought 
revenge. He ascribed his ill-treatment to Mary's being 
under the advice and control of her Catholic favourites, 
particularly to the advice of Rizzio, a foreigner, her private 
secretary. Several malcontent " reformed " nobles joined 
with Darniey in agreeing to assist him in the assassinating 
of Rizzio, taking a bond from him to protect them against 
evil consequences. Mary was sitting at supper with some 
ladies of her court, Rizzio and other servants being in 
waiting, when the conspirators rushed in. Darniey went 
to the back of the Queen's chair ; Rizzio, seeing their 
object, ran to the Queen for protection ; she, who was in the 
sixth month of her pregnancy, endeavoured by entreaties 
and screams to save his life. The ruffians stabbed him at 
her feet, and then dragged him out and covered his body 
with wounds.^® 

310. This black and bloody transaction, for which not 
one of the assistants of Darniey was ever punished, was 
in all probability the cause, the chief cause, of the just, 
though illegal, killing of Darniey himself. The next year 
after the murder of Rizzio, 1567, Mary having in the 
meanwhile brought forth a son (afterwards our James I., 
of half Pope and half Puritanical memory), Darniey was 

'* Lingard, History^ vi., p. 61. 
17 



258 

taken ill at Glasgow. The Queen went to visit him, 
treated him with great kindness, and, when he became 
better in health, brought him back to Edinburgh ; but 
for the sake of better air lodged him in a house at 
some distance from other houses, out of the town, where 
she visited him daily, and where in a room immediately 
under his she slept every night. But on the night of the 
loth of February (1567) she, having notified it to him, 
slept at her palace, having promised to- be present at 
the marriage of two of the attendants of her court, which 
marriage took place and at which she was present : on 
this very night the king's lodging-house was blown up 
by powder, and his dead body cast into an adjoining 
piece of ground ! ^^ If the powder had given this base and 
bloody man time for thought, he would, perhaps, have 
reflected on the stabs he had given Rizzio in spite of the 
screams of a swooning and pregnant wife. 

311. Now it was that the great and life-long calamities 
of this unfortunate queen began. She had been repeatedly 
insulted, and even imprisoned, by the different factions, 
who, aided and abetted by the English Queen, alternately 
oppressed both her and her people ; but she was now 
to lead the life and die the death of a malefactor. It has 
been proved beyond all doubt that the Earl of Bothwell, 
with other associates, bound in a *' bloody bond," murdered 
Darnley. This was openly alleged, and in placards about 
the streets it was averred that Mary was in the plot.^° 
No positive proof has ever been produced to make good 
this charge, but the subsequent conduct of the Queen was 

'* Lingard, History, vi., p. 70. 

^ The question whether Mary had cognizance of the plot against her 
husband's life has been keenly discussed. Lingard considers that "there 
is no credible evidence " to connect her with the design. Rewards were at 
once offered for the discovery of the author of the placards, and it was subse- 
quently ascertained to be James Murray, a *' partisan of the faction hostile to 
the court" {ibid.^ pp. 70, 71). 



I 



259 

of a nature very suspicious. I shall simply state such facts 
as are admitted on all hands ; namely, that Bothwell had 
before the murder been in great favour with the Queen and 
possessed power that his talents and character did not 
entitle him to ; that after the murder he was acquitted of 
it by a mock trial, which she might have prevented ; that 
on the 24th of April (fifty-three days after the murder) 
she was, on her return from a visit to her infant son, seized 
by Bothwell at the head of 3,000 horsemen and carried to 
his castle of Dunbar ; that before she left the castle, on the 
3rd of May, she agreed to marry him ; that he had a wife 
then alive ; that a divorce, both Protestant and Catholic, in 
one court for adultery and in the other for consanguinity, 
took place between Bothwell and his wife in the space of 
six days; that on the 12th of May Bothwell led the Queen 
to the Sessions-house, where, in the presence of the judges, 
she pardoned him for the violence committed on her 
person ; that on the 15th ot May she openly married him ; 
that the French ambassador refused to appear at the 
ceremony, and that Mary refused, in this case, to listen 
to the entreaties of the family of Guise.''^ 

312. Scores of volumes have been written, some in 
support of the assertion that Mary was consenting to the 
murder of her husband, and others in support of the 
negative of that proposition. Her enemies brought for- 
ward letters and sonnets which they alleged to have been 
written by Mary to Bothwell previous to her husband's 
murder. Her friends deny the authenticity of these ; and 
I think they make their denial good. Whitaker, an 
Englishman, a Rector in the Church of England, mind, — a 
man, too, who has written much against the Catholic 
religion, — defends Mary against the charge of having con- 
sented or having known of the intention to murder her 
husband. But nobody can deny the above-stated facts ; 

*' Lingard, History^ pp. T\-T^ 



26o 

nobody can deny that she v/as carried off by Bothwell, 
that she, being at perfect Hberty, pardoned him for that, 
and that she immediately married him, though it excited 
horror in the family of Guise, whom she had always 
theretofore listened to with the docility of a dutiful 
daughter .2^ 

313. This gross conduct, almost equal, in power of 
exciting odium, to the murder of such a wretch as Darnley, 
was speedily followed by tremendous punishment. A part 
of her subjects armed against her and defeated Bothwell, 
who was compelled to flee the country, and who in a few 
years afterwards died in prison in Denmark. She herself 
became a prisoner in the hands of her own subjects, and she 
escaped from their prison walls only to come and end her 
life within those of Elizabeth, her wily and deadly enemy. 

314. The rebels were headed by the Earl of Murray, a 
natural son of Mary's father, and to her a most unnatural 
and cruel brother. He had imprisoned and deposed the 
Queen, had had her son crowned at thirteen months 
old, and had had himself elected Regent of the king- 
dom. ^^ Murray had begun his life of manhood, not only 
as a Catholic, but as an ecclesiastic. He was prior of St. 
Andrew's, but finding that he could gain by apostacy, he, 
like Knox, apostatized, and, of course, broke his oath ; 
and Whitaker says of him, that though ** he was guilty of 
the most monstrous crimes, yet he was denominated a good 
man by the reformers of those days." His great object 
was to extirpate the Catholic religion, as the best means of 
retaining his power ; and being also a " bold liar " and a 
man that stuck at no forgery, no perjury, no bloody deed 
that answered his purpose, he was a man after **good 
Queen Bess's " own heart. 

^ Lingard {History^ p. 74), holds that Mary was not free at Dunbar; 
** she remained a captive for the space of ten days, nor was she suffered to 
depart till she had consented to become the wife of Bothwell." 

» Ibid.^ pp. 77-80. 



26l 

315. She, however, at first affected to disapprove of his 
conduct, threatened to march an army to compel him to 
restore the Queen, gave the Queen positive assurances of 
her support, and invited her to take, in case of need, shelter 
and receive protection in England. In evil hour Mary, 
confiding in these promises and invitations, took, contrary 
to the prayers of her faithful friends on their knees, the 
fatal resolution to throw herself into the jaws of her who 
had so long thirsted for her blood.^* At the end of three 
days she found that she had escaped to a prison. Her 
prison was, indeed, changed two or three times, but a 
prisoner she remained for nineteen long years, and was at 
last most savagely murdered for an imputed crime, which 
she neither did nor could commit. 

316. During these nineteen years Elizabeth was in- 
triguing with Mary's rebellious subjects, bearing Scotland 
to pieces by means of her corruption spread amongst the 
different bands of traitors, and inflicting on a people who 
had never offended her every species of evil that a nation 
can possibly endure. 

317. To enumerate, barely to enumerate, all or one half 
of the acts of hypocrisy, perfidy, meanness and barbarity 
that Elizabeth practised against this unfortunate queen, 
^'ho was little more than twenty-five years of age when 
she was inveigled within the reach of her harpy claws, — 
barely to enumerate these would require a space exceeding 
that of this whole chapter. While she affected to dis- 
approve of Murray, she instigated him to accuse his queen 
and sister ; while she pretended to assert the inviolability 
of sovereigns, she appointed a commission to try Mary for 
her conduct in Scotland ; while she was vowing vengeance 
against the Scotch traitors for their rebellious acts against 
her cousin, she received as presents from them a large 
part of the jewels which Mary had received from her first 

** Lingard, History^ p. 85. 



262 

husband, the King of France ; and when, at last, she was 
compelled to declare Mary innocent of having consented 
to the murder, she not only refused to restore her agreeably 
to her solemn promise repeatedly made, but refused also to 
give her her liberty, and, moreover, made her imprison- 
ment more close, rigorous and painful than ever. Murray, 
her associate in perfidy, was killed in 1570 by a man 
whose estate he had unjustly confiscated ; but traitor after 
traitor succeeded him, every traitor in her pay, and Scot- 
land bleeding all the while at every pore because her 
cruel policy taught her that it was necessary to her own 
security. Whitaker produces a crowd of authorities to 
prove that she endeavoured to get Mary's infant son into 
her hands, and that having failed in that she endeavoured 
to cause him to be taken off by poison. 

318. At last, in 1587, she brought her long-suffering 
victim to the block ! Those means of dividing and des- 
troying which she had all her life long been employing 
against others, began now to be employed against herself, 
and she saw her life in constant danger. She thought, 
and perhaps rightly, that these machinations against her 
arose from a desire in the Catholics (and a very natural 
desire it was) to rid the world of her and her horrid 
barbarities and to make way for her Catholic lawful 
successor, Mary, so that now nothing short of the death 
of this queen seemed to her a competent guarantee for 
her own life. In order to open the way for the foul 
deed that had been resolved on, an Act of Parliament was 
passed, making it death for any one who was within the 
realm to conspire with others for the purpose of invading 
it or for the purpose of procuring the death of the Queen. 
A seizure was made of Mary's papers. What was want- 
ing in reality was, as Whitaker has proved, supplied by 
forgery, " a crime," says he, " which, with shame to us, it 
must be confessed, belonged peculiarly to the Protestants.' 
But what right had Elizabeth to complain of any hostile 



263 

intention on the part of Mary ? She was a queen as well 
as herself. She was held in prison by force ; not having 
been made prisoner in war, but having been perfidiously 
entrapped and forcibly detained. Everything had been 
done against her, short of spilling her blood ; and, had she 
not a clear and indisputable right to make war upon and 
to destroy her remorseless enemy by all the means within 
her power ? And as to a trial, where was the law or 
usage that authorised one queen to invite another into 
her dominions, then imprison her, and then bring her to 
trial for alleged offences against her ? 

319. When the mode of getting rid of Mary was de- 
bated in Elizabeth's council, Leicester was for poison, 
others were for hardening her imprisonment and killing 
her in that way; but Walsingham was for death by 
means of a trial, a legal proceeding being the only one 
that would silence the tongues of the world.^ A com- 
mission was accordingly appointed, and Mary was tried 
and condemned, and that, too, on the evidence of papers, 
a part, at least, of which were barefaced forgeries, all of 
which were copies, and the originals of none of which 
were attempted to be produced ! The sentence of death 
was pronounced in October. For four months the savage 
Ehzabeth was employed in devising plans for causing her 
victim to be assassinated, in order to avoid the odium of 
being herself the murderer ! This is proved by Whitaker 
beyond all possibility of doubt ; but though she had en- 
trusted the keeping of Mary to two men, mortal enemies 
of the Catholics, they, though repeatedly applied to for 
the purpose, perseveringly refused. Having ordered her 
secretary, Davison, to write to them on the subject. Sir 
Amias Paulet, one of the keepers, returned for answer that 
he " was grieved at the motion made to him, that he 
offe-red his life and his property to the disposal of her 

** Lingard, History ^ p. 211. 



264 

Majesty, but absolutely refused to be concerned in the 
assassination of Mary." The other keeper, Sir Drue 
Drury, did the same. When she read this answer 'she 
broke out into reproaches against them, complained of 
the " daintiness of their consciences," talked scornfully of 
'* the niceness of such precise fellows," and swore that she 
would " have it done without their assistance. "^^ At the 
end, however, of four months of unavailing efforts to find 
men base and bloody enough to do the deed, she resorted 
to her last shift, the legal murder, which was committed 
on her hapless victim on the 8th of February, 1587, a day 
of everlasting infamy to the memory of the English queen, 
" who," says Whitaker, " had no sensibihties of tenderness 
and no sentiments of generosity ; who looked not forward 
to the awful verdict of history, and who shuddered not at 
the infinitely more awful doom of God." I blush, as an 
Englishman, to think that this was done by an English 
queen, and one whose name I was taught to lisp in my 
infancy as the honour of her sex and the glory of our isle. 

320. Ah ! and thus was I taught, and thus have we all 
been taught. It is surely, then, our duty to teach our 
children to know the truth. Talk of " answers " to me, 
indeed ! Let them deny, if they can, that this Head of 
the Church, this maker of it, was a murderer, and wished 
to be an assassin, in cold blood. 



*• Lingard. Elizabeth *' was often heard to lament that among the 
thousands who professed to be attached to her as their sovereign, not one 
would spare her the necessity of dipping her hands in the blood of a 
sister queen." 



265 



CHAPTER XI. 

321. Detestably base as was the conduct of "good 
Queen Bess " in the act of murdering her unfortunate 
cousin, her subsequent hypocrisy was still more detestable. 
She affected the deepest sorrow for the act that had been 
committed, pretended that it had been done against her 
wish, and had the superlative injustice and baseness to 
imprison her secretary, Davison, for having despatched the 
warrant for the execution, though she, observe, had signed 
that warrant,^ and though, as Whitaker has fully proved, 
she had reviled Davison for not having despatched it after 
she had in vain used all the means in her power to induce 
him to employ assassins to do the deed. She had, by a 
series of perfidies and cruelties wholly without a parallel, 
brought her hapless victim to the block in that very 
country to which she had invited her to seek safety ; she 
had, in the last sad and awful moments of that victim, had 
the barbarity to refuse her the consolations of a divine of 
her own communion f she had pursued her with hatred and 
malice that remained unglutted even when she saw her 
prostrate under the common hangman, and when she saw 
the blood gushing from her severed neck ; unsated with the 
destruction of her body, she, Satan-like, had sought the 

' See Whitaker, Marj/ Queen of Scots Vindicated (ed. 1790), iii., p. 544, 
seqq. (Secretary Davison's apology). 
' Lingard, History ^ yi., p. 226. 



266 

everlasting destruction of her soul ; and yet, the deed being 
done, she had the hypocrisy to affect to weep for the un- 
timely end of her ** dear cousin," and, which was still more 
diabolical, to make use of her despotic power to crush her 
humane secretary under pretence that he had been the cause 
of the sad catastrophe.® All expressions of detestation and 
horror fall short of our feehngs, and our only consolation is 
that we are to see her own end ten thousand times more to 
be dreaded than that of her victim. 

322. Yet such were the peculiar circumstances of the 
times, that this wicked woman escaped, not only for the 
present but throughout her long reign, that general hatred 
from her subjects which her character and deeds so well 
merited; nay, it perversely happened that immediately 
after this foul deed there took place an event which rallied 
all her people round her, and made her Hfe more than ever 
an object of their solicitude. 

323. Philip II., King of Spain, who was also sovereign 
of the Low Countries, resolved on an invasion of England, 
with a fleet from Spain and with an army from Flanders. 
She had given him quite provocation enough : she had 
fomented rebellions against him, as she long had in France 
against the king of that country. Philip was the most 
powerful monarch in Europe : he had fleets and armies 
vastly superior to hers ; the danger to England was really 
great ; but though these dangers had been brought upon it 
solely by her malignity, bad faith, and perfidy, England 
was still England to her people, and they unanimously 
rallied round her. On this occasion, and indeed, on all 
others where love of country was brought to the test, the 
Catholics proved that no degree of oppression could make 
them forget their duty as citizens or as subjects. Even 
from Hume it is extorted that the Catholic gentlemen, 

• Hume, History of England (Murray's reprint), ii., p. 505 ; Lingard, 
vL, p. 232. 



267 

though her laws excluded them from all trust and authority, 
" entered as volunteers in her fleet or army ; some equipped 
ships at their own charge and gave the command of them 
to Protestants ; others were active in animating their 
tenants and vassals and neighbours to the defence of their 
country ; and every rank of men, burying for the pre- 
sent all party distinctions, seemed to prepare themselves 
with order as well as vigour to resist these invaders."* 
Charles I., James 11., George I., and George II., and even 
George III., all saw the time when they might have 
lamented the. want of similar loyalty in Protestants. The 
first lost his head, the second his throne, the third and 
fourth were exposed to great danger of a similar loss, and 
the fifth lost America ; and all by the doings of Pro- 
testants. 

324. The intended invasion was prevented by a tremen- 
dous storm, which scattered and half destroyed the Spanish 
fleet called the Armada ; and in all human probability the 
invaders would not have succeeded even if no storm had 
arisen. But at any rate there was great danger ; no one 
could be certain of the result : the Catholics, had they 
listened to their just resentment, might have greatly added 
to the danger, and therefore their generous conduct merited 
some relaxation of the cruel treatment which they had 
hitherto endured under her iron sceptre. No such relaxa- 
tion, however, took place; they were still treated with 
every species of barbarous cruelty, subjected to an inquisi- 
tion infinitely more severe than that of Spain ever had 
or ever has been, and, even on the bare suspicion of dis- 
afiection, imprisoned, racked, and not unfrequently put 
to death. 

325. As to Ireland, where the estates of the convents 
and where the church property had been confiscated in 
the same way as in England, and where the greater 

f JRutne, History of England ^ p. 575. 



268 

distance of the people from the focus of power, and apostacy 

and fanaticism, had rendered it more difficult to effect their 
" conversion " at the point of the bayonet, or by the halter 
or the rack, — as to this portion of her dominions, her reign 
was almost one unbroken series of robberies and butcheries. 
One greedy and merciless minion after another was sent to 
goad that devoted people into acts of desperation, and 
that, too, not only for the obvious purpose, but for the 
avowed purpose, of obtaining a pretence for new confisca- 
tions. The ** Reformation " had from its very outset had 
plunder written on its front, but as to Ireland it was all 
plunder from the crown of its head to the sole of its foot. 
This horrible lynx-like she-tyrant could not watch each 
movement of the Catholics there as she did in England ; 
she could not so harass them in detail ; she could find there 
no means of executing her dreadful police ; and therefore 
she murdered them in masses. She sent over those parsons 
whose successors are there to the present day. The ever 
blood-stained sword secured them the tithes and the 
church lands ; but even that blood-stained sword could not 
then and never did, though at one time wielded by the 
unsparing and double-distilled Protestant Cromwell, obtain 
them congregations. However, she planted, she watered 
with rivers of blood, and her long reign saw take fast root 
in the land that tree the fruit of which the unfortunate 
Irish taste to this hour, and which will, unless prevented 
by more wise and more just measures than appear to 
have been yet suggested, finally prove the overthrow of 
England herself. 

326. I am to speak further on of the monstrous im- 
moralities produced in England by the " Reformation," 
and also of the poverty and misery that it produced ; and 
then I shall have to trace (through Acts of Parliament) 
this poverty and misery up to the " Reformation : " yes, 
for therein we shall see, clearly as we see the rivulet 
bubbUng out of the bed of the spring, the bread ^nd wate| 



269 

of England and the potatoes of Ireland ; but even in this 
place it is necessary to state the cause of the greater 
poverty and degradation of the Irish people. For ages 
that ill-treated people have, in point of clothing and 
food, formed a contrast with the English. Dr. Franklin, in 
speaking of Ireland, says that " one would think that the 
cast-ofF clothes of the working- people of England were sent 
over to be worn by the working-people here." 

327. Whence comes it that this contrast has so long 
existed ? The soil and the cHmate of Ireland are as good 
as those of England. The islands are but a few miles 
asunder. Both are surrounded by the same sea. The 
people of the former are as able and as willing to labour 
as those of the latter ; and of this they have given proof in 
all parts of the world to which they have migrated, not to 
carry packs to cheat fools out of their money, not to carry 
the lash to make others work, but to share themselves, and 
cheerfully to share, in the hardest labours of those amongst 
whom they have sought shelter from the rod of unrelenting 
oppression. Whence comes it, then, that this contrast, so 
unfavourable to Ireland, has so long existed ? The answer 
to this interesting question we shall find by attending to 
the different measures dealt out to the two people during 
the long and cruel reign of which we are now speaking ; 
and we at the same time trace all the miseries of Ireland 
back at once to that " Reformation " the blessings of which 
have, with such persevering falsehood and hypocrisy, been 
dinned in our ears for ages. 

328. We have seen in Chapter III. of this little work, 
paragraphs 50, 51 and 52, that the Catholic Church was 
not and is not an affair of mere abstract faith ; that it was 
not so very spiritual a concern as to scorn all cares relative 
to the bodies of the people ; that one part, and that a capital 
part, of its business was to cause works of charity to be 
performed ; that this charity was not of so very spiritual a 
nature as not to be at all tangible or obvious to the vulgar 



270 

sense; that it showed itself in good works done to the 
needy and suffering; that the tithes and offerings and 
income from real property of the CathoHc Church went in 
great part to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to lodge 
and feed the stranger, to sustain the widow and the 
orphan, and to heal the wounded and the sick ; that, in 
short, a great part and, indeed, one of the chief parts of 
the business of this Church was to take care that no 
person, however low in life, should suffer from want either 
of sustenance or care ; and that the priests of this Church 
should have as few selfish cares as possible to withdraw 
them from this important part of their duty, they were 
forbidden to marry. Thus, as long as this Church was the 
national Church there were hospitality and charity in the 
land, and the horrid word " pauper " had never been so 
much as thought of. 

329. But when the Protestant religion came, and along 
with it a married priesthood, the poorer classes were 
plundered of their birthright and thrown out to prowl 
about for what they could beg or steal. Luther and his 
followers wholly rejected the doctrine that good works 
were necessary to salvation. They held that faith, and 
faith alone, was necessary. They expunged from their 
Bible the Epistle of St. James, because it recommends 
and insists on the necessity of good works, which Epistle 
Luther called " an Epistle of straw." The " Reformers *' 
differed from each other as widely as the colours of the 
rainbow in most other things, but they all agreed in this, 
that good works were unnecessary to salvation, and that 
the " saints," as they had the modesty to call themselves, 
could not forfeit their right to heaven by any sins, how- 
ever numerous and enormous. By those amongst whom 
plunder, sacrilege, adultery, polygamy, incest, perjury, and 
murder were almost as habitual as sleeping and waking, 
by those who taught that the way to everlasting bliss 
could not be obstructed by any of these, nor by all of them 



271 

put together; — by such persons charity, besides thai it 
was a so well-known Catholic commodity, would be, as 
a matter of course, set wholly at nought. 

330. Accordingly we see that it is necessarily excluded 
by the very nature of all Protestant establishments ; that 
is to say in reality ; for the name of charity is retained by 
some of these establishments, but the substance nowhere 
exists. The Catholic establishment interweaves deeds 
of constant and substantial charity with the faith itself. 
It makes the two inseparable. The Douay Catechism, 
which the Protestant parsons so much abuse, says that 
*• the first fruit of the Holy Ghost is charity." And then 
it tells us what charity is, namely, " to feed the hungry, to 
give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit and 
ransom captives, to harbour the harbourless, to visit the 
sick, to bury the dead." Can you guess, my friends, why 
fat Protestant parsons rail so loudly against this wicked 
Douay Catechism ? " It is in the nature of man to love all 
this. This is what ** the gates of hell will never prevail 
against." This is what our fathers believed and what 
they acted upon, and this it was that produced in them 
that benevolent disposition which, thank God, has not 
yet been wholly extirpated from the breasts of their 
descendants. 

331. Returning now to paragraphs 50, 51 and 52, just 
mentioned, it is there seen that the Catholic Church 
rendered all municipal laws about the poor wholly unneces- 
sary; but when that Church had been plundered and 
destroyed, when the greedy leading *' Reformers " had 
sacked the convents and the churches, when those great 
estates which of right belonged to the poorer classes had 
been taken from them, when the parsonages had been first 
well pillaged and the remnant of their revenues given to 
married men, then the poor (for poor there will and must 
be in every community) were left destitute of the means of 
existence other than the fruits of begging, theft and robbery. 



272 

Accordingly, when Elizabeth had put the finishing hand to 
the plundering of the Church and poor, once happy and 
free and hospitable England became a den of famishing 
robbers and slaves. Strype, a Protestant, and an authority 
to whom, Hume appeals and refers many hundreds of times, 
tells us of a letter from a Justice of the Peace in Somerset- 
shire to the Lord Chief Justice, saying, "I may justly say 
that the able men that are abroad seeking the spoil and 
confusion of the land are able, if they were reduced to 
good subjection, to give the greatest enemy her Majesty 
hath a strong battle, and as they are now are so much 
strength to the enemy. Besides, the generation that daily 
springeth from them is Hkely to be most wicked : these 
spare neither rich nor poor, but, whether it be great gain or 
small, all is fish that cometh to net with them; and yet I 
say both they and the rest are trussed up apace." ^ The 
same Justice says : " In default of justice many wicked 
thieves escape ; for most commonly the most simple 
countrymen and women, looking no farther than to the 
loss of their own goods, are of opinion that they would not 
procure any man's death for all the goods in the world." 
And while Elizabeth complained bitterly of the non-execu- 
tion of her laws, the same Protestant historian tells us that M\ 
" she executed more than five hundred criminals in a year, ■: 
and was so little satisfied with that number that she 
threatened to send private persons to see her penal laws 
executed * for profit and gain's sake.' " It appears that she 
did not threaten in vain, for soon after this a complaint 

■* Strype, Annals of the Reformation (2nd ed.), vii., Appendix ccxiii. 
The letter, enclosing a calendar of the assizes, was dated Sept. 25, 1596. 
** In all executed this year (in Somersetshire) forty." Hume {History^ ii., p. 
591) says : *' The other counties of England were in no better condition than 
Somersetshire, and many of them were even in a worse ; there were at 
least 300 or 400 able-bodied vagabonds in every county who lived by theft 
and rapine, and who sometimes met in troops to the number of sixty an4 
committed spoil on the inhabitants," 



273 

was made in Parliament that the stipendiary magistrate of 
that day was •* a kind of Uving creature, who for half a 
dozen of chickens would dispense with a dozen of penal 
statutes."® She did not, however, stop with this ** liberal" 
use of the gallows. Such was the degree of beggary, of 
vagabondage, and of thievishness and robbery, that she 
resorted, particularly in London and its neighbourhood, to 
martial law. This fact is so complete a proof of the 
horrible effects cf the *' Reformation " upon the moral state 
of the people, and it is so fully characteristic of the govern- 
ment which the people of England had, in consequence of 
that Reformation, become so debased as to submit to, that 
I must take the statement as it stands in Hume, who 
gives the very words of " good and glorious Bess's " com- 
mission to her head murderer upon this occasion. ** The 
streets of London were very much infested with idle 
vagabonds and riotous persons; the Lord Mayor had 
endeavoured to repress this disorder, the Star-chamber had 
exerted its authority and inflicted punishment on these 
rioters ; but the Queen, finding these remedies ineffectual, 
revived " [revived ? What does he mean by revived ?] 
" martial law, and gave Sir Thomas Wilford a commission 
as provost-martial, 'granting him authority and com- 
manding him, upon signification given by the justices of the 
peace in London or the neighbouring counties of such 
offenders worthy to be speedily executed by martial law, 
to take them, and according to the justice of martial law 
to execute them upon the gallows or gibbet.' "' And yet 
this is she whom we have been taught to call ** good 

* Hume, ul. sup.y p. 591. 

' Hume, History, ii., p. 583. ** There remains a letter of Queen Eliza- 
beth's to the Earl of Sussex, after the suppression of the northern rebellion, 
in which she sharply reproves him because she had not heard of his having 
executed any criminals by martial law, though it is probable that near 
eight hundred persons suffered, one way or other, on account of that slight 
insurrection " {ibid. ). 

18 



274 

Queen Bess ; " this is she of the " glories " of whose reign 
there are men of learning base enough to talk even to 
this day ! 

332. But such were the natural consequences of the 
destruction of the Catholic Church, aiid of the plundering 
of the poor which accompanied that destruction, and 
particularly of lodging all power, ecclesiastical and civil, in 
the same hands. However, although this terrible she- 
tyrant spared neither racks nor halters, though she was 
continually reproving the executors of her bloody laws for 
their remissness, while they were strewing the country 
with the carcasses of malefactors or alleged malefactors, all 
would not do ; that hunger which breaks through stone 
walls set even her terrors and torments at defiance. At 
last it was found to be absolutely necessary to make some 
general and permanent and solid provision for the poor, 
and in the forty-third year of her reign was passed that 
act which is in force to this day, and which provides a 
maintenance for indigent persons, which maintenance is to 
come from the land, assessed and collected by overseers, 
and the payment enforced by process the most effectual 
and most summary. And here we have the great, the 
prominent, the staring, the horrible and ever durable con- 
sequence of the " Reformation ; " that is to say, pauperism 
established by law. 

333. Yet this was necessary. The choice that the 
plunderers had in England was this, — legal pauperism or 
extermination; and this last they could not effect, and if 
they could it would not have suited them. They did not 
possess power sufficient to make the people live in a state 
of three-fourths starvation, therefore they made a legal 
provision for the poor ; not, however, till they had tried in 
vain all other methods of obtaining a something to supply 
the place of Catholic charity. They attempted at first to 
cause the object to be effected by voluntary collections at 
the churches; but alas! those who now entered those 



275 

churches looked upon Luther as the great teacher, and he 
considered St. James's Epistle as an " epistle of straw." 
Every attempt of this sort having failed, as it necessarily 
must when the parsons who were to exhort others to 
charity had enough to do to rake together all they could 
for their own wives and children, every act ("and there 
were many passed) short of a compulsory tax, enforced by 
distraint of goods and imprisonment of person, having 
failed, to this "glorious Bess "and her "Reformation" 
Parliament at last came ; and here we have it to this day, 
filling the country with endless quarrels and litigation, 
setting parish against parish, man against master, rich 
against poor, and producing, from a desire of the rich to 
shuffle out of its provisions, a mass of hypocrisy, idleness, 
fraud, oppression and cruelty, such as was, except in the 
deeds of the original " Reformers," never before witnessed 
in the world. 

334. Nevertheless it was, as far as it went, an act of 
justice. It was taking from the land and giving to the poor 
a part at least of what they had been robbed of by the 
" Reformation." It was doing in a hard and odious way 
a part of that which had been done in the most gentle and 
amiable way by the Church of our fathers. It was, indeed, 
feeding the poor like dogs instead of like one's children ; 
but it was feeding them. Even this, however, Elizabeth 
and her plundering minions thought too much to do for the 
savagel}^ treated Irish people : here we come to the real 
cause of that contrast of which I have spoken in paragraph 
325 ; here we come to that which made Dr. Franklin sup- 
pose, or to say that any one might naturally suppose, that 
" the old clothes of the working classes in England had 
been sent over to be worn by the same class in Ireland." 

335' We have seen how absolute necessity compelled 
the Queen and her plunderers to make a legal provision for 
the relief of the indigent in England ; we have seen that it 
was only restoring to them a part of that oi which they had 



270 

been plundered ; and upon what principle was it that they 
did not do the same with regard to the people of Ireland ? 
These had been plundered in precisely the same manner 
that the former had ; they had been plunged into misery 
by precisely the same means, used under precisely the 
same hypocritical pretences ; why were not they to be re- 
lieved from that misery in the same manner, and why was 
not the poor-law to be extended to Ireland ? 

336. Base and cruel plunderers ! They grudged the 
relief in England, but they had no compulsory means to 
be obtained out of England, and they found it impossible 
to make Englishmen compel one another to live in a state 
of three-fourths starvation. But they had England to 
raise armies in to send to effect this purpose in Ireland, 
especially when those English armies were urged on by 
promise of plunder, and were (consisting as they did of 
Protestants) stimulated by motives as powerful, or nearly 
so, as the love of plunder itself. Thus it was that Ireland 
was pillaged without the smallest chance of even the res- 
toration which the English have obtained ; and thus have 
they, down unto this our day, been a sort of outcasts in 
their own country, being stripped of all the worldly goods 
that God and nature allotted them and having received 
not the smallest pittance in return. 

337. Why, there have been '' ages of misrule " in Ireland, 
many, many ages too ; or the landholders of England have 
during those ages been most unjustly assessed. But they 
are sensible — or at least the far greater part of them — that a 
provision for the indigent, a settled, certain, legal provision, 
coming out of the land, is a right which the indigent pos- 
sess, to use the words of Blackstone, " in the very nature 
of civil society." Every man of reflection must know that 
the labours which the affairs of society absolutely demand 
could never be performed but by persons who work for 
their bread ; he must see that a very large part of these 
persons will do no more work than is necessary to enable 



277 

them to supply their immediate wants ; and therefore he 
must see that there always must be, in every community, 
a great number of persons who, from sickness, old age, 
from being orphans, widows, insane, and from other causes, 
will need relief from some source or other. This is the lot 
of civil society, exist wherever and however it may. 

338. Has it not, then, been a " misrule of ages " in Ire- 
land ? Have not that people been most barbarously treated 
by England ? An Irishman, who has a thousand times been 
ready to expire from starvation in his native land, who has 
been driven to steal sea-weed to save himself from death, 
goes to America, feels hunger without having the means 
of relieving it, and there in that foreign land he finds at 
once, be he where he may, an overseer of the poor ready 
to give him relief! And is such monstrous, such crying 
injustice as this, still to be allowed to exist ? The folly 
here surpasses, if possible, the injustice and the cruelty. 
The English landholders make the laws, we all know that. 
They subject — ^justly subject — their own estates to assess- 
ments for the relief of the poor in England, and while they 
do this they exonerate the estates of the Irish landholders 
from a like assessment, and choose rather to tax themselves, 
and to tax us and tax the Irish besides, for the purpose of 
paying an army to keep that starving people from obtain- 
ing relief by force ! Lord Liverpool, when the Scotch 
lords and others applied to him in 1819 for a grant out of 
the taxes, to relieve the starving manufacturers in Scotland, 
very wisely and justly said, " No ; have poor-laws, such as 
ours, and then your poor will be sure of relief." Why 
not say the same thing to the Irish landholders ? Why 
not compel them to give to the people that which is their 
due ? Why is Ireland to be the only civilised country 
upon the face of the earth where no sort of settled legal 
provision is made for the indigent, and where the pastors 
are at the same time total strangers to the flocks, except 
in the season of shearing ? Let us at least, as long as this 



278 

state of things shall be suffered to exist, have the decency 
not to cry out quite so loudly against the " outrages of the 
Irish." 

339. I must now return from this digression (into which 
the mention of Elizabeth's barbarous treatment of Ireland 
has led me) in order to proceed with my account of her 
"reforming" projects. She was extremely jealous of her 
prerogatives and powers, but particularly in what regarded 
her headship of the Church. She would make all her sub- 
jects be of her religion, though she had solemnly sworn at 
her coronation that she was a Catholic, and though in 
turning Protestant she had made a change in Cranmer's 
Prayer Book and in his articles of faith. In order to bend 
the people's consciences to her tyrannical will, which was 
the more unjust because she herself had changed her 
religion and had even changed the Protestant articles, 
she established an inquisition the most horrible that ever 
was heard of in the world. She gave what she called a 
commission to certain bishops and others, whose power 
extended over the whole kingdom and over all ranks and 
degrees of the people. They were empowered to have an 
absolute control over the opinions of all men, and to punish 
all men according to their discretion, short of death. They 
might proceed legally if they chose, in the obtaining of 
evidence against parties ; but if they chose they were to 
employ imprisonment, the rack, or torture of any sort, for 
this purpose. If their suspicions alighted upon any man, 
no matter respecting what, and they had no evidence 
nor any even hearsay against him, they might administer 
an oath called ex-ojfficio to him, by which he was bound, 
f called upon, to reveal his thoughts and to accuse himself, 
his friend, his brother or his father, upon pain of death. 
These subaltern monsters inflicted what fines they pleased ; 
they imprisoned men for any length of time that they 
pleased ; they put forth whatever new articles of faith 
they pleased ; and in short, this was a commission exercis 






279 

ing, in the name and for the purposes of the Queen, an 
absolute control over the bodies and the minds of that 
people whom the base and hypocritical and plundering 
"reformers" pretended to have delivered from a *' slavish 
subjection to the Pope," but whom they had, without any 
pretending, actually delivered from freedom, charity and 
hospitality. 

340, When one looks at these deeds, when one sees 
what abject slavery Elizabeth had reduced the nation 
to, and especially when one views this commission, it is 
impossible for us not to reflect with shame on what we 
have so long been saying against the Spanish Inquisition, 
which from its first establishment has not committed so 
much cruelty as this first Protestant queen committed in 
any one single year of the forty-three years of her reign. 
And observe again, and never forget, that Catholics, where 
they inflicted punishments, inflicted them on the ground 
that the offenders had departed from the faith in which 
they had been bred and which they had professed ; whereas 
the Protestant punishments have been inflicted on men 
because they refused to depart from the faith in which 
they had been bred, and which they had professed all their 
lives.^ And in the particular case of this brutal hypocrite, 
they were punished, and that, too, in the most barbarous 
manner, for adhering to that very religion which she had 
openly professed for many years of her life, and to which 
she, even at her coronation, had sworn that she belonged 1 

341. It is hardly necessary to attempt to describe the 
sufferings that the Catholics had to endure during this 
murderous reign. No tongue, no pen is adequate to the 
task. To hear mass, to harbour a priest, to admit the 



* Hallam, Constitutional History (lotb ed.)> i.» p- 114, writes: *' It 
cannot be truly alleged that any greater provocation had as yet been given 
by the Catholics than that of pertinaciously continuing to believe and 
worship as their fathers had done before them." 



28o 

supremacy of the Pope, to deny this horrid virago's 
spiritual supremacy, and many other things which an 
honourable Catholic could scarcely avoid, consigned him 
to the scaffold and to the bowel-ripping knife. But the 
most cruel of her acts, even more cruel than her butcheries 
because of far more extensive effect and far more produc- 
tive of suffering in the end, were the penal laws inflicting 
fines for recusancy, that is to say, for not going to her 
new-fangled Protestant Church. And was there ever 
tyranny equal to this ? Not only were men to be punished 
for not confessing that the new religion was the true one, 
not only for continuing to practise the religion in which 
they and their fathers and children had been born and 
bred, but also punished for not actually going to the new 
assemblages, and there performing what they must, if they 
were sincere, necessarily deem an act of open apostasy 
and blasphemy ! ® Never in the whole world was there 
heard of before tyranny equal to this. 

342. The fines were so heavy and were exacted with 
such unrelenting rigour, and for the offence of recusancy 
alone the sums were so enormous, that the whole of the 
conscientious Catholics were menaced with utter ruin. 
The priests who had never been out of England, and who 
were priests before the reign of this horrible woman, were 
by the twentieth year of her reign few in number, for the 
laws forbade the making of any new ones on pain of death, 
and indeed, none could be made in England, where there 
was no clerical authority to ordain them, the surviving 

• " The act operated as an absolute interdiction of the Catholic rites, 
however privately celebrated. . . . We find instances of severity towards 
Catholics even in the first years of the reign, and it is evident that their 
solemn rites were only performed by stealth and at much hazard. Thus 
Sir Edward Waldgrave and his lady were sent to the Tower in 1561 for 
hearing mass and having a priest in their house. Many others about the 
same time were punished for the like offence ** (Hallam, Constitutional 
History ^ i., p. 114). 



28l 

Catholic bishops being forbidden to do it on pain of death. 
Then she harassed the remainder of the old priests in such 
a way that they were, by the twentieth year of her reign, 
nearly exterminated ; and as it was death for a priest to 
come from abroad, death to harbour him, death for him to 
perform his functions in England, death to confess to him, 
there appeared to be an impossibility of preventing her 
from extirpating, totally extirpating from the land that 
religion under which England had been so great and so 
happy for ages so numerous, — that religion of charity and 
hospitality, that religion which made the name of pauper 
unknown, that religion which had built the churches and 
cathedrals, which had planted and reared the Universities, 
whose professors had made Magna Charta and the Com- 
mon Law, and who had performed all those glorious deeds 
in legislation and in arms which had made England really 
** the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of 
the world ; " there now appeared to be an impossibility, 
and especially if the termagant tyrant should live for 
another twenty years (which she did), to prevent her from 
effecting this total extirpation. From accomplishing this 
object she was prevented by the zeal and talents of 
William Allen, an English gentleman, now a priest, and 
who had before been of the University of Oxford. In 
order to defeat the she-tyrant's schemes for rooting out 
the Catholic religion, he formed a seminary at Douay, in 
Flanders, for the education of English priests.^" He was 
joined by many other learned men ; and from this depot, 
though at the manifest hazard of their lives, priests came 
into England, and thereby the malignity of this inexorable 
apostate was defeated. There was the sea between her 



'" The seminary was commenced in 1570. For an account of the 
difficulties which attended the undertaking, see Records of English Catholics 
under the Penal Laws {Douay Diaries^ Historical Introduction by Rev. J. 
F. Knox, D.D.). 



282 

and Allen, but while he safely defied her death-dealing 
power she could not defy his, for she could not erect a 
wall round the island, and into it priests would come and 
did come ; and in spite of her hundreds of spies and her 
thousands of ** pursuivants," as were called the myrmi- 
dons who executed her tormenting and bloody behests, 
the race of English priests was kept in existence, and the 
religion of their fathers along with it." In order to break 
up the seminary of Allen, who was afterwards made a 
cardinal, and whose name can never be pronounced but 
with feelings of admiration, she resorted to all sorts of 
schemes, and at last, by perfidiously excluding from her 
ports the fleet of the Dutch a nd Flemish insurgents, to 
whom she stood pledged to give protection, she obtained 
from the Spanish Governor a dissolution of Allen's college ; 
but he found protection in France from the House of 
Guise, by whom he and his college were, in spite of 
most bitter remonstrances from Elizabeth to the King of 
France, re-established at Rheims." 

343. Thus defeated in all her projects for destroying the 
missionary trunk, she fell with more fury than ever on the 
branches and on the fruit. To say mass, to hear mass, to 
make confession, to hear confession, to teach the Catholic 
religion, to be taught it, to keep from her church service, 
these were all great crimes, and all punished with a greater 
or less degree of severity ; so that the gallows and gibbets 
and racks were in constant use, and the gaols and dungeons 
choking with the victims. The punishment for keeping 
away from her church was £10 a lunar month, which of 
money of the present day was about ;f 250. Thousands 
upon thousands refused to go to her church, and thus she 
sacked their thousands upon thousands of estates, for, 



" "In the course of the first five years Dr. Allen sent almost one 
hundred missionaries into the kingdom " (Lingard, vi., p. 163) 
" Ibid,, p. 164. 



I 



283 

observe, here was, in money of this day, a fine of £Zy2$o a 
year. And now, sensible and just reader, look at the 
barbarity of this *' Protestant Reformation." See a gentle- 
man of perhaps sixty years of age or more, see him, born 
and bred a Catholic, compelled to make himself and his 
children beggars, actual beggars, or to commit what he 
deemed an act of apostasy and blasphemy. Imagine, if 
you can, barbarity equal to this ; and yet even this is not 
seen in its most horrible Hght, unless we take into view 
that the tyrant who committed it had for many years of 
her life openly confessed the Catholic religion, and had at 
her coronation sworn that she firmly believed in that 
religion. 

344. In the enforcing of these horrible edicts every 
insult that base minds could devise was resorted to and 
in constant use. No Catholic or reputed Catholic had a 
moment's security or peace. At all hours, but generally in 
the night-time, the ruffians entered his house by breaking 
it open, rushed in different divisions into the rooms, broke 
open closets, chests and drawers, rummaged beds and 
pockets, in short, searched every place and thing for priests, 
books, crosses, vestments or any person or thing appertain- 
ing to the Catholic worship." In order to pay the fines 
gentlemen were compelled to sell their estates piece by 
piece ; when they were in arrear the tyrant was by law 
authorised to seize all their personal property, and two- 
thirds of their real estate every six months, and they were 
in some cases suffered, as a great indulgence, to pay an 

'• Cy., Lingard, vL, p. 166. "The names of all the recusants in eaoh 
parish, amounting to about 50,000, had been returned to the Council. The 
magistrates were repeatedly blamed for their want of activity and success, 
and the prisons in every county were filled with persons suspected as priests 
or harbourers of priests, or delinquents against one or other of the penal 
laws. No man could enjoy security even in the privacy of his own house, 
where he was liable at all hours, but generally at night, to be visited by a 
magistrate at the head of an armed mob. At a signal given, the doors 



^ 284 

annual composition for the liberty of abstaining from what 
they deemed apostasy and blasphemy. Yet whenever she 
took it into her suspicious head that her life was in danger, 
from whatever cause and causes, and just cause enough 
there always was, she had no consideration for them on ac- 
count of the fines or the composition. She imprisoned them 
either in gaol or in the houses of Protestants — kept them 
banished from their own homes for years. The Catholic 
gentleman's own house afforded him no security; the indis- 
cretion of children or friends, the malice of enemies, the 
dishonesty or revenge of tenants or servants, the hasty 
conclusions of false suspicion, the deadly wickedness of 
those ready to commit perjury for gain's sake, the rapacity 
and corruption of constables, sheriffs and magistrates, the 
virulent prejudice of fanaticism, — to every passion hostile to 
justice, happiness and peace, to every evil against which 
it is the object of just laws to protect a man, the conscien- 
tious Catholic gentleman lived continually exposed, and 
that, too, in that land which had become renowned 
throughout the world by those deeds of valour and those 
laws of freedom which had been performed and framed 
by his Catholic ancestors. 

345. As to the poor conscientious " recusants," that is to 
say, keepers away from the tyrant's church, they who had 
no money to pay fines with were cramm ed into prison until 
the gaols could (which was very soon) hold no more, and 
until the counties petitioned to be relieve d from the charge 
of keeping them. They were then discharged, being first 



were burst open, and the pursuivants in separate divisions hastened to the 
different apartments, examined the beds, tore the tapestry and wainscotting 
from the walls, forced open closets, drawers and coffers, and made every 
search which their ingenuity could suggest to discover either a priest, or 
books, chaHces and vestments appropriated to the Catholic worship. . . . 
The use of the torture was common to most of the European nations ; in 
England, during the reign of Elizabeth, it was employed with the most 
wantoQ harbarity." 



28$ 

publicly whipped, or having their ears bored with a hot 
iron. This not answering the purpose, an act was passed 
to compel all '* recusants " not worth twenty marks a year 
to quit the country in three months after conviction, and 
to punish them with death in case of their return. The 
old " good Bess " defeated herself here, for it was found 
impossible to cause the law to be executed, in spite of all 
her menaces against the justices and sheriffs who could 
not be brought up to her standard of ferociousness ; and 
they, therefore, in order to punish the poor Catholics, 
levied sums on them at their pleasure, as a composition for 
the crime of abstaining from apostasy and profanation. 

346. The Catholics at one time entertained a hope that, 
by a declaration of their loyalty, they should obtain from 
the Queen some mitigation, at least, of their sufferings. 
With this view they drew up a very able and most dutiful 
petition, containing an expression of their principles, their 
sufferings and their prayers. Alas ! they appealed to her 
to whom truth and justice and mercy were all alike wholly 
unknown." The petition being prepared, all trembled at 
the thought of the danger of presenting it to her. At last 
Richard Shelley, of Michael Grove, Sussex, assumed the 
perilous charge. She had the (as it would have been in 
any other human being) incomparable baseness to refer 
him for an answer to the gloomy echoes of a pestiferous 
prison, where he expired, a victim to his own virtue and to 
her implacable cruelty.^^ 



'* They declared — 1st, That all Catholics, both laity and clergy, held 
her (Elizabeth) to be their sovereign, as well de jure 2& de facto, andly, 
That they believed it to be sinful for any person whomsoever to lift up 
his hand against her, as God's anointed. 3rdly, That it was not in the 
power of priest or pope to give licence to any man to do that which was 
sinful, &c. They prayed to be allowed to abstain from the services of the 
Established Church, " through motives of conscience," and begged that 
their priests might not be banished (Lingard, ut sup.y p. 188). 

'* Ibid. 



286 



347- Talk of Catholic tyrants ! Talk of the Catholics 
having propagated their faith by acts of force and cruelty ! 
I wonder that an English Protestant, even one whose very 
bread comes from the spoliation of the Catholics, can be 
found with so little shame as to talk thus. Our Protestant 
historians tell us that the ships of the Spanish Armada 
were ** loaded with racks," to be used upon the bodies of 
the English, who were preserved from these by the wisdom 
and valour of " good and glorious Queen Bess." In the 
first place it was the storm and not the Queen that pre- 
vented an invasion of the country, and in the next place 
the Spaniards might have saved themselves the trouble of 
importing racks, seeing that Elizabeth had always plenty 
of them, which she kept in excellent order and in almost 
daily use. It is to inflict most painful feelings on Protes- 
tants, to be sure ; but justice demands that I describe one 
or two of her instruments of torture, because in them we 
see some of the most powerful of those means which she 
made use of for establishing her Protestant Church : and 
here I thank Dr. Lingard for having enabled me to give 
this description. One kind of torture which was called 
*' the Scavenger's Daughter, was a broad hoop of iron, 
consisting of two parts fastened by a hinge. The prisoner 
was made to kneel on the pavement and to contract himself 
into as small a compass as he could. Then the execu- 
tioner, kneeling on his shoulders, and having introduced 
the hoop under his legs, compressed the victim close 
together till he was able to fasten the feet and hands 
together over the small of the back. The time allotted to 
this kind of torture was an hour and a half, during which 
time the blood gushed from the nostrils, and sometimes 
from the hands and feet." There were several other kinds 
of arguments of conversion that gentle Betsy made use 
of to eradicate the " damnable errors " of popery, but her 
great argument was the rack. This *' was a large open 
frame of oak raised three feet from the ground. The 



-J.L 



287 

prisoner was laid under it on his back on the floor; his 
wrists and ankles were attached by cords to two rollers at 
the ends of the frame ; these were moved by levers in 
opposite directions, till the body rose to a level with the 
frame. Questions were then put ; and if the answers did 
not prove satisfactory, the sufferer was stretched more and 
more till the bones started from their sockets. "^^ 

348. There, Protestants ; there, revilers of the Catholic 
religion ; there are some of the means which " good Queen 
Bess" made use of to make her Church "established by 
law ! " Compare, oh ! compare, if you have one particle of 
justice left in you, compare these means with the means 
made use of by those who introduced and established the 
Catholic Church ! 

349. The other deeds and events of the reign of this 
ferocious woman are now of little interest, and indeed do 
not belong to my subject ; but seeing that the pensioned 
poet, Thompson, in that sickly stuff of his which no man of 
sense ever can endure after he gets to the age of twenty, 
has told us about '* the glories of the maiden reign," it may 
not be amiss, before I take my leave of this " good " creature, 
to observe that her " glories " consisted in having broken 
innumerable solemn treaties and compacts, in having been 
continually bribing rebel subjects to annoy their sovereigns, 
in having had a navy of freebooters, in having had an army 
of plunderers, in having bartered for a little money the 
important town of Calais, and in never having added even 
one single leaf of laurel to that ample branch which had 
for ages been seated on the brows of England ; and that as 
to her maiden virtues, Whitaker (a Protestant clergyman, 
mind,) says that " her life was stained with gross licen- 
tiousness, and she had many gallants, while she called 



" Lingard. Note OO, p. 343, where a list of other tortures and persons 
ivho experienced them is given. 



288 

herself a maiden queen." " Her life, as he truly says, was 
a life of " mischief and of misery," and in her death (which 
took, place in the year 1603, the seventieth of her age and 
the forty-fifth of her reign) she did all the mischief that it 
remained in her power to do by sulkily refusing to name 
her successor, and thus leaving to a people whom she had 
been pillag;jng and scourging for forty- five years a pro- 
bable civi) war, as " a legacy of mischief after her death." 
Historian? have been divided in opinion as to which was 
the worst man that England ever produced, her father or 
Cranmer ; but all mankind must agree that this was the 
worst woman that ever existed in England, or in the whole 
vorld, Jezebel herself not excepted. 



" Lingard says : ** To her first Parliament she had expressed a wish 
that on her tomb might be inscribed the title of ' the Virgin Queen.' But 
the woman who despises the safeguards must be content to forfeit the repu- 
tation of chastity. It was not long before her familiarity with Dudley pro- 
voked dishonourable reports. At first they gave her pain, but her feelings 
were soon blunted by passion ; in the face of the whole court she assigned 
to her supposed paramour an apartment contiguous to her own bed- 
chamber, and by this indecent act proved that she had become regardless 
of her character and callous to every sense of shame. But Dudley, though 
the most favoured, was not considered as ner only lover ; among his rivals 
were numbered Hatton, and Raleigh, and Oxford, and Blount, and Simier, 
and Anjou. . . The court imitated the manners of the sovereign. 
It was a place in whicti, according to Faunt, 'all enormities reigned in 
the highest degree ' " {History y vi., p. 322). 



289 



CHAPTER XII. 

350. In the foregoing chapters it has been proved be- 
yond all contradiction how the " Reformation," as it is 
called, was engendered, how established in hypocrisy and 
perfidy, and cherished and fed by rivers of innocent 
English and Irish blood. Those who pretend to answer 
these contentions only rail against the personal character 
of priests and cardinals and popes, and against rites and 
ceremonies and articles of faith and rules of discipline, 
matters with which I have never meddled, and which have 
very little to do with my subject, my object, as the title of 
my work expresses, being to show that the " Reformation" 
has impoverished and degraded the main body of the 
people of England and Ireland. I have shown that this 
change of religion was brought about by some of the 
worst, if not the very worst people that ever breathed ; 
I have shown that the means were such as human nature 
revolts at. So far I can receive no answer from men not 
prepared to deny the authenticity of the statute-book. It 
now remains for me to show from the same sources the 
impoverishing and degrading consequences of this change 
of religion; and that, too, with regard to the nation as a 
whole, as well as with regard to the main body of the 
people. 

351. But though we have now seen the Protestant 
religion established, completely established, by the gibbets, 
the racks and the ripping-knives, I must, before I come to 

19 



2go 

the impoverishing and degrading consequences of which 
I have just spoken, and of which I shall produce the 
most incontestable proofs, I must give an account of the 
proceedings of the Reformation people after they had 
established their system. The present number will show 
us the Reformation producing a second, and that, too (as 
every generation is wiser than the preceding), with vast 
improvements, the first being only '* a godly Reforma- 
tion," while the second we shall find to be ** a thorough 
godly " one. The next (or thirteenth) chapter will intro- 
duce to us a third Reformation, commonly called the 
''glorious" Reformation, or revolution. The fourteenth 
chapter will give us an account of events still greater, 
namely, the American Reformation, or revolution, and that 
of the French. All these we shall trace back to the first 
Reformation as clearly as any man can trace the branches 
of a tree back to its root. And then we shall, in the remain- 
ing chapter or chapters, see the fruit in the immorality, 
crimes, poverty, and degradation of the main body of the 
people. It will be curious to behold the American and 
French Reformations, or revolutions, playing back the 
principles of the English Reformation people upon them- 
selves, and — which is not less curious, and much more 
interesting — to see them force the Reformation people to 
begin to cease to torment the Catholics, whom they had 
been tormenting without mercy for more than two hundred 
years. 

352. The " good and glorious " Queen Elizabeth, who, 
amongst her other "godly" deeds, granted to her minions, 
to whom there was no longer church plunder to give, 
monopolies of almost all the necessaries of life, so that 
salt, for instance, which used to be about 2d. a bushel was 
raised to 15s., or about £y of our present money; the 
Queen, who had, as Whitaker says, expired in sulky 
silence as to her successor, and had thus left a probable 
civil war as a legacy of mischief, was, however, peaceably 



I 



291 

succeeded by James I., that very child of whom poor Mary 
Stuart was pregnant when his father, Henry Stuart, Earl 
of Darnley, and associates murdered Rizzio in her pre- 
sence, as we have seen in paragraph 309, and which child, 
when he came to man's estate, was a Presbyterian, was 
generally a pensioner of Elizabeth, abandoned his mother 
to that queen's wrath, and amongst his first acts in Eng- 
land took by the hand, confidied in, and promoted that 
Cecil who was the son of the old Cecil, who did, indeed, 
inherit the great talents of his father, but who had also 
been, as all the world knew, the deadly enemy of this new 
king's unfortunate mother. 

353. James, like all the Stuarts except the last, was at 
once prodigal and mean, conceited and foolish, tyrannical 
and weak; but the staring feature of his character was 
insincerity. It would be useless to dwell in the detail on 
the measures of this contemptible reign, the prodigalities 
and debaucheries and silliness of which did, however, 
prepare the way for that rebellion and that revolution 
which took place in the next, when the " double-distilled 
Reformers " did at last provide a " martyr " for the 
hitherto naked pages of the Protestant calendar. Indeed, 
this reign would, as far as my purposes extend, be a 
complete blank, were it not for that '* gunpowder plot " 
which alone has caused this Stuart to be remembered, and 
of which, seeing that it has been and is yet made a 
source of great and general delusion, I shall take much 
more notice than it would otherwise be entitled to. 

354. That there was a plot in the year 1605 (the second 
year after James came to the throne), the object of which 
was to blow up the King and both Houses of Parliament 
on the first day of the session, that Catholics and none 
but Catholics were parties to this plot, that the conspira- 
tors were ready to execute the deed, and that they all 
avowed this to the last, are facts which no man has ever 
attempted to deny ; any more than any man has attempted 



292 

to deny that the parties to the Cato Street plot did really 
intend to cut off the heads of Sidmouth and Castlereagh, 
which intention was openly avowed by these parties from 
first to last, to the officers who took them, to the judge 
who condemned them, and to the people who saw their 
heads severed from their bodies. 

355. But as the Parliamentary Reformers in general 
were most falsely and basely accused of instigating to the 
commission of the last mentioned intended act, so were the 
Catholics in general, and so are they to this day, not less 
falsely and less basely accused of instigating to the in- 
tended act of 1605. But as to the conspirators themselves, 
as to the extent of their crime, are we wholly to leave out 
of our consideration the provocation they had received ? 
To strike a man is an assault, to kill a man is murder ; but 
are striking and killing always assault and murder ? Oh, 
no ! for we may justifiably assault and kill a robber or a 
housebreaker. The Protestant writers have asserted two 
things, first that the Catholics in general instigated to or 
approved of the gunpowder plot, and secondly that this is 
a proof of the sanguinary principles of their religion.^ As 
to the first, the contrary was fully and judicially proved to 
be the fact ; and as to the second, supposing the con- 
spirators to have had no provocation, those of Cato Street 
were not Catholics at any rate, nor were those Catholics 
who qualified Charles I. for a post in the calendar, and 
that, too, observe, after he had acknowledged his errors 
and had made compensation to the utmost of his power. 

356. However, these conspirators had provocation, and 
now let us see what that provocation was. The King, 

• " The administration took a sudden turn towards severity ; the prisons 
were filled, the penalties exacted, several suffered death, and the general 
helplessness of their condition impelled a few persons (most of whom had 
belonged to what was called the Spanish party in the last reign) to the 
gunpowder conspiracy, unjustly imputed to the majority of Catholics " 
(Hallam, Constitutional History^ loth ed., i., 405). 



293 

before he came to the throne, had promised to mitigate the 
penal laws which, as we have seen, made their lives a 
burden. Instead of this those laws were rendered even 
more severe than they had been in the former reign. 
Every species of insult as well as injury, which the 
Catholics had had to endure under the persecutions of the 
Established Church, was now heightened by that leaven of 
Presbyterian malignity and ferocity which England had 
now imported from the north, which had then poured forth 
upon this devoted country endless hordes of the most 
greedy and rapacious and insolent wretches that God 
had ever permitted to infest and scourge the earth. We 
have seen in paragraphs 341, 342, 343 and 344 how the 
houses of conscientious Catholic gentlemen were rifled, 
how they were rummaged, in what constant dread these 
unhappy men lived, how they were robbed of their estates 
as a punishment for recusancy and other things called 
crimes ; we have seen that by the fines imposed on these 
accounts the ancient gentry of England, whose families had 
for ages inhabited the same mansions and had been 
venerated and beloved for their hospitality and charity, 
we have seen how all these were gradually sinking into 
absolute beggary in consequence of these exorbitant extor- 
tions : but what was their lot now ? The fines, as had been 
the practice, had been suffered to fall in arrear in order to 
make the fined party more completely at the mercy of the 
crown ; and James, whose prodigality left him not the 
means of gratifying the greediness of his Scotch minions 
out of his own exchequer, delivered over the English 
Catholic gentry to these rapacious minions, who, thus clad 
with royal authority, fell with all their well-known hard- 
ness of heart upon the devoted victims as the kite falls 
upon the defenceless dove.'' They entered their mansions, 

2 "The execution of the penal laws enabled the King, by an ingenious 
comment, to derive considerable profit from his past forbearance. It was 



294 

ransacked their closets, drawers and beds, seized their rent- 
rolls, in numerous instances drove their wives and children 
from their doors, and with all their native upstart insolence 
made a mockery of the ruin and misery of the unoffending 
persons whom they had despoiled.* 

357. Human nature gave the lie to all preachings of 
longer passive obedience, and at last one of these op- 
pressed and insulted English gentlemen, Robert Catesby, 
of Northamptonshire, resolved on making an attempt to 
deliver himself and his suffering brethren from this almost 
infernal scourge. But how was he to obtain the means ? 
From abroad, such was the state of things, no aid could 
possibly be hoped for. Internal insurrection was, as long 
as the makers and executors of the barbarous laws re- 
mained, equally hopeless. Hence he came to the conclu- 
sion, that to destroy the whole of them afforded the only 
hope of deliverance ; and to effect this there appeared to him 
jio other way than that of blowing up the Parliament House 
when, on the first day of the session, all should be assembled 
together. He soon obtained associates ; but in the whole 
they amounted to only about thirteen, and all except three 
or four in rather obscure situations in life, amongst whom 
was Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshireman, who had served as 
an officer in the Flemish wars. He it was who undertook 
to set fire to the magazine, consisting of two hogsheads 
and thirty-two barrels of gunpowder ; he it was who, if not 

pretended that he had never forgiven the penalties of recusancy. . . . 
The legal fine of ;^20 per lunar month was again demanded, and not only 
for the lime to come but for the whole period of the suspension ; a demand 
which, by crowding thirteen payments into one, reduced many families of 
moderate incomes to a state of absolute beggary " (Lingard, History, vii., 
p. 21). 

' For the way in which the Catholics were handed over for the Scotch 
followers of James to prey upon, see ibid, and p. 22, note : cf. also p. 28. 
In the note Lingard states that the penalties were exacted with such rigour 
by the bishops of Hereford and Landaff, that in the coanty of Hereford 
alone 409 families found themselves reduced to a state of beggary. 






I 



^95 

otherwise to be accomplished, had resolved to blow him- 
self up along with the persecutors of his brethren ; he it was 
who, on the 5th of November, 1605, a few hours only before 
the Parliament was to meet, was seized in the vault with 
two matches in his pocket and a dark lantern by his side, 
ready to effect his tremendous purpose; he it was who, 
when brought before the King and Council, replied to all 
their questions with defiance ; he it was who, when asked 
by a Scotch Lord of the Council why he had collected so 
many barrels of gunpowder, answered, ** to blow you 
Scotch beggars back to your native mountains," and in 
this answer proclaimed to the world the true immediate 
cause of this memorable conspiracy ; an answer which, in 
common justice, ought to be put into the mouth of those 
effigies of him which crafty knaves induce foolish boys still 
to burn on the 5th of November. James (whose silly con- 
ceit made him an author) was just in one respect at any 
rate. In his works he calls Fawkes *' the English Scaevola,"* 
and history tells us that that famous Roman, having missed 
his mark in endeavouring to kill a tyrant who had doomed 
his country to slavery, thrust his offending hand into a hot 
fire, and let it burn while he looked defiance at the tyrant. 
358. Catesby and the other conspirators were pursued ; 
he and three of his associates died with arms in their hands, 
fighting against their pursuers. The rest of them (except 
Tresham, who was poisoned in prison) were executed, 
and also the famous Jesuit, Garnet, who was wholly inno- 
cent of any crime connected with the conspiracy, and who, 
having come to a knowledge of it through the channel of 
confession, had, on the contrary, done everything in his 
power to prevent the perpetrating of its object. He was 
sacrificed to that unrelenting fanaticism which, encour- 
aged by this and other similar successes, at last, as we are 



*apud Howell, ii., p. 201- 



296 

soon to see, cut off the head of the son and successor of 
this very king.* The King and Parliament escaped from 
feelings of humanity in the conspirators. Amongst the dis- 
abilities imposed on the Catholics, they had not yet been, 
and were not until the reign of Charles II., shut out of Par- 
liament. So that if the House were blown up, Catholics, 
peers and members, would have shared the fate of the 
Protestants. The conspirators could not give warning to 
the Catholics without exciting suspicions. They did give 
such warning where they could, and this led to the timely 
detection, otherwise the whole of the two Houses, and the 
King along with them, would have been blown to atoms ; 
for though Cecil evidently knew of the plot long before 
the time of intended execution ; though he took care to 
nurse it till the moment of advantageous discovery arrived ; 
though he was, in all probability, the author of a warning 
letter which, being sent anonymously to a Catholic noble- 
man and communicated by him to the government, 
became the ostensible cause of the timely discovery ; not- 
withstanding these well-attested facts, it by no means 
appears that the plot originated with him, or, indeed, with 
anybody but Catesby, of whose conduct men will judge 
differently according to the difference in their notions about 
passive obedience and non-resistance. 

359. This would be enough of the famous gunpowder 
plot ; but since it has been ascribed to bloody-mindedness 
as the natural fruit of the Catholic religion, since in our 
Common Prayer-Book we are taught, in addressing God, 
to call all Catholics indiscriminately " our cruel and blood- 
thirsty enemies," let us see a little what Protestants have 
attempted and done in this blowing-up way. This King 
James, as he himself averred, was nearly being assassinated 
by his Scotch Protestant subjects, Earl Gowrie and his 

• The account here given of the Gunpowder Plot is taken from that 
given by Lingard, vol. vii., chapter i. 



I 



297 

associates ; and after that narrowly escaped being blown 
up with all his attendants by the furious Protestant 
burghers of Perth. * Then again, the Protestants in the 
Netherlands formed a plot to blow up their governor, the 
Prince of Parma, with all the nobility and magistrates of 
those countries, when assembled in the city of Antwerp. 
But the Protestants did not always fail in their plots, nor 
were those who engaged in them obscure individuals. For, 
as we have seen in paragraph 310, this very King James's 
father, the king of Scotland, was, in 1567, blown up by 
gunpowder and thereby killed. This was doing the thing 
effectually. Here was no warning given to anybody ; and 
all the attendants and servants, of whatever religion and of 
both sexes, except such as escaped by mere accident, were 
remorselessly murdered along with their master. And who 
was this done by ? *' By bloodthirsty Catholics ? " No ; 
but by the lovers of the " Avangel," as the wretches called 
themselves, the followers of that Knox to whom a monu- 
ment has been erected at Glasgow. The conspirators on 
this occasion were not thirteen obscure men, and those, 
too, who had received provocation enough to make men 
mad, but a body of noblemen and gentlemen who really 
had received no provocation at all from Mary Stuart, to 
destroy whom was more the object than it was to destroy 
her husband. Let us take the account of these con- 
spirators in the words of Whitaker; and let the reader 
recollect that Whitaker, who published his book in 1787, 
was a parson of the Church of England, rector of Ruhan- 
Lanyhorne, in Cornwall, and that he was amongst those 
clergymen who were most strenuously opposed to the rites 
and ceremonies and tenets of the Catholic Church ; but he 
was a truly honest man, a most zealous lover of truth 
and hater of injustice. Hear this staunch Church parson, 
then, upon the subject of this Protestant gunpowder plot, 

• Collier, Church History ^ ii., pp. 663-4. 



298 

concerning which he had made the fullest inquiry and col- 
lected together the clearest evidence. He says, in speaking 
of the plot, " The guilt of this wretched woman, Elizabeth, 
and the guilt of that wretched man, Cecil, appear too 
evident at last upon the face of the whole. Indeed, as 
far as we can judge of the matter, the whola disposition 
of the murderous drama was this : the whole was 
originally planned and devised between Elizabeth, Cecil, 
Morton and Murray, and the execution committed to 
Lethington, Bothwell and Balfour ; and Elizabeth, we 
may be certain, was to defend the original and more 
iniquitous part of the conspirators, Morton and Murray, 
in charging their own murder upon the innocent Mary." ' 
Did hell itself, did the devil, who was, as Luther himself 
says, so long the companion and so often the bed-fellow of 
this first " Reformer," ever devise wickedness equal to this 
Protestant plot ? Let us hear no more, then, about the 
blood-thirstiness of the Catholic religion ; and if we must 
still have our 5th of November, let the " moral " disciples 
of Knox, the inhabitants of " Modern Athens," have their 
loth of February. Let them, too (for it was Protestants 
that did the deed), have their 30th of January, the anni- 
versary of the killing of the son of this same King James. 
Nobody knew better than James himself the history of his 
father's and his mother's end. He knew that they had 
both been murdered by Protestants, and that, too, with 
circumstances of atrocity quite unequalled in the annals 
of human infamy, and therefore he himself was not for 
vigorous measures against the Catholics in general on 
account of the plot ; but love of plunder in his minions 
prevailed over him, and now began to blaze with fresh 
fury that Protestant reformation spirit which at last gave 
him a murdered son and successor, as it had already given 
him a murdered father and mother. 

• Whitaker, Mary Queen of Scots vindicated^ ed. 1787, iii., p. 253. 



299 

360. Charles I., who came to the throne on the death of 
his father in 1625, with no more sense and with a stronger 
tincture of haughtiness and tyranny than his father, seemed 
to wish to go back in church matters towards the CathoHc 
rites and ceremonies, while his parliaments and people were 
every day becoming more and more puritanical. Divers 
were the grounds of quarrel between them, but the great 
ground was that of religion. The Catholics were suffering 
all the while, and especially those in Ireland, who were 
plundered and murdered by whole districts, and especially 
under Wentworth, who committed more injustice than 
ever had before been committed even in that unhappy 
country. But all this was not enough to satisfy the 
Puritans; and Laud, the Primate of the Established 
Church, having done a great many things to exalt that 
Church in point of power and dignity, the purer Protes- 
tants called for *' another Reformation," and what they 
called a *' thorough godly Reformation." 

361. Now, then, this Protestant Church and Protestant 
King had to learn that " Reformations," like comets, have 
tails. There was no longer the iron police of Elizabeth to 
watch and to crush all gainsayers. The Puritans artfully 
connected political grievances, which were real and numer- 
ous, with rehgious principles and ceremonies, and having 
the main body of the people with them as to the former, 
while these were, in consequence of the endless change 
of creeds, become indifferent as to the latter, they soon 
became, under the name of ** The Parliament," the sole 
rulers of the country ; they abolished the Church and the 
House of Lords, and finally brought, in 1649, during the 
progress of their " thorough godly Reformation," the un- 
fortunate King himself to trial and to the block ! 

362. All very bad, to be sure ; but all very natural, seeing 
what had gone before. If " some such man as Henry VIII." 
were, as Burnet says he was, necessary to begin a '* Re- 
formation," why not '* some such man " as Cromwell to 



300 



)re, I 



complete it ? If it were right to put to death More 
Fisher, and thousands of others, not forgetting the grand- 
ntother of Charles, on a charge of treason, why was 
Charles's head to be so very sacred ? If it were right to 
confiscate the estates of the monasteries and to turn adrift 
or put to death the abbots, priors, monks, friars and nuns, 
after having plundered the latter of even the ear-rings and 
silver thimbles, could it be so very wrong to take away 
merely the titles of those who possessed the plundered 
property ? And as to the Protestant Church, if it were 
right to establish it on the ruins of the ancient Church by 
German bayonets, by fines, gallows and racks, could it be 
so very wrong to establish another newer one on its ruins 
by means a great deal milder ? If, at the time we are now 
speaking of, one of Elizabeth's parsons, who had ousted a 
priest of Queen Mary, had been alive, and had been made 
to fly out of his parsonage-house, not with one of Bess's 
bayonets at his back, but on the easy toe of one of Crom- 
well's godly Bible-reading soldiers, could that parson have 
reasonably complained ? 

363. Cromwell (whose reign we may consider as having 
lasted from 1649 to 1659), therefore, though he soon made 
the Parliament a mere instrument in his hands, though he 
was tyrannical and bloody, though he ruled with a rod of 
iron, though he was a real tyrant, was nothing more than 
the *' natural issue," as Elizabeth would have called him, 
of the "body" of the "Reformation." He was cruel 
towards the Irish— he killed them without mercy; but, 
except in the act of selling 20,000 of them to the West 
Indies as slaves, in what did he treat them worse than 
Charles, to whom and to whose descendants they were 
loyal from first to last ?® And certainly even that sale 



^ For Cromwell's policy in shipping off numbers of the Irish to the West 
Indies, and other schemes for expatriating them, see Lingard, viii., p. 175 
se^., and note. 



30I 

did not equal in point of atrociousness many of the acts 
committed against them during the three last Protestant 
reigns ; and in point of odiousness and hatefulness it fell 
far short of the ingratitude of the Established Church in 
the reign of Charles II. 

364. But common justice forbids us to dismiss the Crom- 
wellian reign in this summary way, for we are now to 
behold " Reformation " the second, which its authors and 
executors called " a thorough godly Reformation," insist- 
ing that " Reformation " the first was but a half-finished 
affair, and that the " Church of England as by law estab- 
lished " was only a daughter of the " Old Woman of 
Babylon." This " Reformation " proceeded just like the 
former; its main object was plunder. The remaining 
property of the Church was now, as far as time and other 
circumstances would allow, confiscated and shared out 
amongst the *' Reformers," who, if they had had time, 
would have resumed all the former plunder (as they did 
part of it) and have shared it out again ! It was really 
good to see these ** godly " persons ousting from the 
abbey lands the descendants of those who had got them 
in " Reformation " the first, and it was particularly good 
to hear the Church bishops and parsons crying " sacri- 
lege " when turned out of their palaces and parsonage- 
houses ; aye, they who and whose Protestant predecessors 
had all their lives long been justifying the ousting of the 
Catholic bishops and priests, who held them by prescrip- 
tion and expressly by Magna Charta. 

365. As if to make " Reformation " the second as much 
as possible like " Reformation " the first, there was now a 
change of reHgion made by laymen only. The Church clergy 
were calumniated just as the CathoHc clergy had been, the 
bishops were shut out of Parliament as the abbots and 
Catholic bishops had been, the cathedrals and churches 
were again ransacked, Cranmer's tables (put in place of 
the altars) were now knocked to pieces, there was a 



302 

general crusade against crosses, portraits of Christ, religious 
pictures, paintings on church windows, images on the out- 
side of cathedrals, tombs in these and the churches.' As 
the mass-books had been destroyed in " Reformation " the 
first, the church books were destroyed in " Reformation " 
the second, and a new book called the " Directory " ordered 
to be used in its place, a step which was no more than an 
imitation of Henry VIII.'s " Christian Man " and Cran- 
mer*s " Prayer Book." And why not this " Directory " ? 
If the mass-book, of nine hundred years' standing and 
approved of by all the people, could be destroyed, surely 
the Prayer Book, of only one hundred years* standing and 
never approved of by one half of the people, might also be 
destroyed ; if it were quite right to put the former down, 
and that, too, as we have seen in paragraph 212, with the 
aid of the sword wielded by German troops, it might 
naturally enough be thought that it could not be very 
wrong to put the latter down with the aid of the sword 
wielded by English troops, unless indeed, there were— 
which we have not been told — something peculiarly agree- 
able to Englishmen in the cut of German steel. 

366. It was a pair of " Reformations," as much alike 
as any mother and daughter ever were. The mother had 
a Cromwell (see paragraph 157), as one of the chief agents 
in her work, and the daughter had a Cromwell, the only 
difference in the two being that one was a Thomas and the 
other an Oliver ; the former Cromwell was commissioned 
to make ** a godly reformation of errors, heresies and 
abuses in the Church," and the latter was commissioned 
to make *' a thorough godly reformation in the Church ; ' 
the former Cromwell confiscated, pillaged and sacked the 
Church, and just the same did the latter Cromwell, except 



■ See an account of the destruction of church ornaments, &c., at this time 
In Suffolk, in The Journal of William Dowsing^ Parliamentary Visitor, in 
the years 1643- 1644. 



303 

that the latter did not at the same time rob the poor, as the 
former had done ; and, which seems a just distinction, the 
latter died in his bed, and the former, when the tyrant 
wanted his services no longer, died on a scaffold. 

367. The heroes of " Reformation " the second were 
great Bible-readers, and almost every man became at 
times a preacher. The soldiers were uncommonly gifted 
in this way, and they claimed a right to preach as one of 
the conditions upon which they bore arms against the king. 
Every one interpreted the Bible in his own way; they 
were all for the Bible without note or comment. Roger 
North (a Protestant), in his Examen,^^ gives an account 
of all sorts of blasphemies and of horrors committed by 
these people, who had poisoned the minds of nearly the 
whole of the community. Hence all sorts of monstrous 
crimes. At Dover a woman cut off the head of her child, 
alleging that, like Abraham, she had had a particular 
command from God. A woman was executed at York for 
crucifying her mother; she had at the same time sacri- 
ficed a calf and a cock. These are only amongst the 
horrors of that " thorough godly Reformation ; " only a 
specimen. And why not these horrors ? We read of 
killings in the Bible ; and if every man be to be his own 
interpreter of that book, who is to say that he acts con- 
trary to his own interpretation ? Why not all these new 
monstrous sects ? If there could be one new religion, one 
new creed made, why not a thousand ? What right had 
Luther to make a new religion, and then Calvin another 
new one, and Cranmer one differing from both these, and 
then Elizabeth to make an improvement upon Cranmer's? 
Were all these to make new religions, and were the en- 
lightened soldiers of Cromwell's army to be deprived of 
this right ? The former all alleged as their authority 
the ** inspiration of the Holy Ghost." What, then? were 

'" Roger North, Examen, 1 740. 



304 

Cromwell and his soldiers to be deprived of the benefit of 
this allegation ? Poor ** godly " fellows, why were they to 
be the only people in the world not qualified for choosing 
a religion for themselves and for those whom they had at 
the point of their bayonets ? One of Cromwell's " godly " 
men went, as North relates, into the church of Walton- 
upon-Thames with a lantern and five candles, telling the 
people that he had a message to them from God, and that 
they would be damned if they did not listen to him. He 
put out one light as a mark of the abolition of the 
Sabbath, the second as a mark of the abolition of all 
tithes and church dues, the third as a mark of the abo- 
lition of all ministers and magistrates ; and then the fourth 
light he applied to setting fire to a Bible, declaring that 
that also was abolished ! These were pretty pranks to 
play; but they were the natural, the inevitable consequence 
of " Reformation " the first. 

368. In one respect, however, these new reformers 
differed from the old ones. They did, indeed, make a new 
religion and command people to follow it, and they in- 
flicted punishments on the refractory ; but those punish- 
ments were beds of down compared with oak planks, when 
viewed by the side of those inflicted by EHzabeth and her 
Church. They forbade the use of the Common Prayer 
Book in all churches and also in private families ; but 
they punished the disobedient with a penalty of five 
pounds for the first offence, ten pounds for the second, and 
with three years' imprisonment for the third, and did not 
hang them, as the Church of England sovereigns had done 
by those who said or heard mass. Bad as these fanatics 
were, wicked and outrageous as were their deeds, they 
never persecuted nor attempted to persecute with a hun 
dredth part of the cruelty that the Church of England had 
done, — aye, and that it did again the moment it regained 
its power after the restoration of Charles II., when it 
became more cruel to the Catholics even than it had 



i 



305 

been in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that, too, not- 
withstanding that the Catholics of all ranks and degrees 
had signalised themselves during the civil war in every 
way in which it was possible for them to aid the royal 
cause. 

369. This at first sight seems out of nature ; but if we 
consider that this Church of England felt conscious that 
its possessions did once belong to the Catholics, that the 
cathedrals and churches and the colleges were all the work 
of Catholic piety, learning and disinterestedness ; when we 
consider this, can we be surprised that these new possessors, 
who had got possession by such means, too, as we have 
seen in the course of this work, — when we consider this are 
we to be surprised that they should do everything in their 
power to prevent the people from seeing, hearing, and con- 
tracting a respect for those whom these new possessors 
had ousted ? Here we have the true cause of all the 
hostility of the Church of England clergy towards the 
Catholics. Take away the possessions, and the hostility 
would cease to-morrow; though there is, besides that, a 
wide and, on their side, a very disadvantageous difference 
between a married clergy and one not married. The 
former will never have an influence with the people any- 
thing like approaching that of the latter. There is, too, 
the well-known superiority of learning on the side of the 
Catholic clergy, to which may be added the notorious 
fact that in fair controversy the Catholics have always 
triumphed. Hence the deep-rooted, the inflexible, the 
persevering and absolutely implacable hostility of this 
established Church to the Catholics, not as men, but as 
Catholics. To what else are we to ascribe that, to this 
day, the Catholics are forbidden to have steeples or bells 
to their chapels ? They whose religion gave us our steeples 
and bells ! To what else are we to ascribe that their 
priests are, even now, forbidden to appear in the streets, 
or in private houses, in their clerical habiliments, and even 
20 



3o6 

when performing their functions at funerals ? Why all this 
anxious pains to keep the Catholic religion out of sight ? 
Men may pretend what they will, but these pains argue 
anything but consciousness of being right on the part of 
those who take those pains. Why, when the English nuns 
came over to England during the French Revolution and 
settled at Winchester, get a bill brought into Parliament 
(as the Church clergy did) to prevent them from taking 
Protestant scholars, and give up the bill only upon a promise 
that they would not take such scholars ? Did this argue a 
conviction in the minds of the Winchester parsons, that 
Bishop North's was the true religion and that William of 
Wykham's was the false one? The Church parsons are 
tolerant enough towards the sects of all descriptions ; quite 
love the Quaker, who rejects baptism and the sacrament ; 
shake hands with the Unitarian, and allow him openly to 
impugn that which they tell us in the Prayer Book a 
man cannot be saved if he do not firmly believe in ; suffer 
these, aye, and even Jews, to present to church livings, and 
refuse that right to Catholics, from whose religion all the 
church livings came ! 

370. Who, then, can doubt of the motive of this implac- 
able hostility, this everlasting watchfulness, this rancorous 
jealousy that never sleeps ? The common enemy being 
put down by the restoration of Charles, the Church fell 
upon the Catholics with more fury than ever. This king, 
who came out of exile to mount the throne in 1660, with 
still more prodigality than either his father or grandfather, 
had a great deal more sense than both put together, and in 
spite of all his well-known profligacy he was, on account of 
his popular manners, a favourite with his people ; but he 
was strongly suspected to be a Catholic in his heart, and 
his more honest brother James, his presumptive heir, was 
an openly declared Catholic. Hence the reign of Charles 
II. was one continued series of plots, sham or real, and one 
unbroken scene of acts of injustice, fraud and false swearing. 



307 

These were plots ascribed to the Catholics, but really plots 
against them. Even the great fire in London, which took 
place during this reign, was ascribed to them, and there is 
the charge to this day going round the base of "the 
monument," which Pope justly compares to a big, lying 
bully :— 

** Where London's column, pointing to the skies, 
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies." 

The words are these : " This monument is erected in 
memory of the burning of this Protestant city by the 
Popish faction, in September, a.d. 1666, for the destruction 
of the Protestant religion and of old English liberty, and 
for the introduction of Popery and slavery. But the fury 
of the Papists is not yet satisfied." It is curious enough 
that this inscription was made by order of Sir Patience 
Ward, who, as Echard shows, was afterwards convicted of 
perjury. Burnet (whom we shall find in full tide by-and 
by) says that one Hubert, a French Papist, " confessec 
that he began the fire " ;^^ but Higgons (a Protestant, mind' 
proves that Hubert was a Protestant, and Rapin agrees 
with Higgons. Nobody knew better than the King the 
monstrousness of this lie, but Charles H. was a lazy, 
luxurious debauchee ; such men have always been unfeel- 
ing and ungrateful, and this king, who had twice owed his 
life to Catholic priests, and who had in fifty-two instances 
held his life at the mercy of Catholics (some of them very 
poor) while he was a wandering fugitive, with immense 
rewards held out for taking him, and dreadful punishments 
for concealing him, — this profligate king, whose ingratitude 
to his faithful Irish subjects is vdthout a parallel in the 
annals of that black sin, had the meanness and injustice 
to suffer this lying inscription to stand. It was effaced by 

" Hubert was proved, upon the evidence of the captain of the ship that 
brought him over, to have landed in England only two days after the fire. 
He was probably insane, but was nevertheless executed. 



308 

his brother and successor, but when the Dutchman and 
the '' glorious revolution " came, it was restored; and there 
it now stands, all the world except the mere mob knowing 
it to contain a most malignant lie.^^ 

371. By conduct like this, by thus encouraging the 
fanatical part of his subjects in their wicked designs, 
Charles II. prepared the way for those events by which his 
family were excluded from the throne for ever. To set 
aside his brother, who was an avowed Catholic, was their 
great object. This was indeed a monstrous attempt ; but, 
legally considered, what was it more than to prefer the 
illegitimate Elizabeth to the legitimate Mary Stuart ? 
What was it more than to enact that any ** natural issue " 
of the former should be heir to the throne ? And how 
could the Protestant Church complain of it, when its great 
maker, Cranmer, had done his best to set aside both the 
daughters of Henry VIII. , and to put Lady Jane Grey on 
the throne ? In short, there was no precedent for annul- 
ling the rights of inheritance, for setting aside prescrip- 
tion, for disregarding the safety of property and of person, 
for violating the fundamental laws of the kingdom, that the 
records of the ** Reformation " did not amply furnish: and 
this daring attempt to set aside James on account of his 
religion might be truly said, as it was said, to be a Protes- 
tant principle ; and it was, too, a principle most decidedly 
acted upon in a few years afterwards. 

372. James II. was sober, frugal in his expenses, econo- 
mical as to public matters, sparing of the people's purses, 
pious and sincere, but weak and obstinate, and he was a 
Catholic ; and his piety and sincerity made him not a 
match for his artful, numerous, and deeply interested foes. 
If the existence of a few missionary priests in the country, 
though hidden behind wainscots, had called forth thousands 



" The inscription was finally erased under William IV., in accordance 
with a vote of the City Corporation. 



309 

of pursuivants in order to protect the Protestant Church, 
if to hear mass in a private house had been regarded as 
incompatible with the safety of that Church, what was to 
be the fate of that Church if a CathoHc king continued to 
sit on the throne ? It was easy to see that the ministry, 
the army, the navy, and all the offices under the govern- 
ment would soon contain few besides Catholics, and it was 
also easy to see that by degrees Catholics would be in the 
parsonages and in the episcopal palaces, especially as the 
King was as zealous as he was sincere. The " Reforma- 
tion " had made consciences to be of so pliant a nature, 
men had changed under it backward and forward so many 
times, that this last (the filling of the Church with Catholic 
priests and bishops), would perhaps, amongst the people 
in general, and particularly amongst the higher classes, 
have produced but little alarm. But not so with the clergy 
themselves, who soon saw their danger, and who, " passive " 
as they were, lost no time in preparing to avert it. 

373. James acted, as far as the law would let him, and 
as far as prerogative would enable him to go beyond the 
law, on principles of general toleration. By this he 
obtained the support of the sectaries. But the Church 
had got the good things, and it resolved if possible to keep 
them. Besides this, though the abbey lands and the rest 
of the real property of the Church and the poor had been 
a long while in the peaceable possession of the then owners 
and their predecessors, the time was not so very distant but 
that able lawyers, having their opinions backed by a well- 
organised army, might still find a flaw in, here and there, a 
grant of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth. Be 
their thoughts what they might, certain it is that the most 
zealous and most conspicuous and most efficient of the 
leaders of the " Glorious Revolution," which took place 
soon afterwards, and which drove James from the throne, 
together with his heirs and his house, were amongst those 



310 

whose ancestors had not been out of the way at the time 
when the sharing of the abbey lands took place. 

374. With motives so powerful against him, the King 
ought to have been uncommonly prudent and wary. He 
was just the contrary. He was severe towards all who 
opposed his views, however powerful they might be. Some 
bishops, who presented a very insolent but artful petition 
to him, he sent to the Tower, had them prosecuted for a 
libel, and had the mortification to see them acquitted. As 
to the behaviour of the Catholics, prudence and modera- 
tion were not to be expected from them. Look at the 
fines, the burning - irons, the racks, the gibbets, and the 
ripping-knives of the late reigns, and say if it were not 
both natural and just that their joy and exultation should 
now be without bounds. These were, alas ! of short dura- 
tion, for a plan (we must not call it a plot) having been 
formed for compelling the King to give up his tolerating 
projects, and " to settle the kingdom," as it was called, the 
planners, without any act of Parliament, and without con- 
sulting the people in any way whatever, invited William, 
the Prince of Orange, who was the Stadtholder of the 
Dutch, to come over with a Dutch army to assist them in 
" settling " the kingdom. All things having been duly 
prepared, the Dutch guards (who had been suffered to get 
from Torbay to London, by perfidy in the English army) 
having come to the King's palace and thrust out the Eng- 
lish guards, the King, having seen one ** settling " of a 
sovereign, in the reign of his father, and apparently having 
no relish for another settling of the same sort, fled from his 
palace and his kingdom and took shelter in France, instead 
of fleeing to some distant English city and there rallying 
his people round him, which if he had done, the event 
would, as the subsequent conduct of the people proved, 
have been very different from what it was. 

375. Now came, then, the "glorious Revolution," or 
Reformation the third ; and when we have taken a view 



of its progress and completion we shall see how it, in 
its natural consequences, extorted for the long-oppressed 
Catholics that relief which, by appeals to the justice and 
humanity of their persecutors, they had sought in vain for 
more than two hundred years. 



313 



CHAPTER XIII. 

376. At the close of the last chapter we saw a Dutch- 
man invited over with an army to *' settle " the kingdom ; 
we saw the Dutch guards come to London and thrust out 
the English guards ; we saw the King of England flee for 
his life and take refuge in France, after his own army had 
been seduced to abandon him. The stage being now 
clear for the actors in this affair, we have now to see how 
they went to work, the manner of which we shall find as 
summary and as unceremonious as heart, however Protes- 
tant, could have possibly wished. 

377. The King being gone, the Lord Mayor and Alder- 
men of London, with a parcel of Common Councilmen, 
and such lords and members of the late King Charles's 
Parliaments as chose to join them, went in February, 1688, 
without any authority from King, Parliament, or people, 
and forming themselves into ** a Convention," at West- 
minster, gave the crown to William (who was a Dutch- 
man) and his wife (who was a daughter of James, but 
who had a brother alive), and their posterity for ever ; 
made new 'oaths of allegiance for the people to take ; 
enabled the new king to imprison at pleasure all whom 
he might suspect ; banished, to ten miles from' London 
all Papists, or reputed Papists, and disarmed them all 
over the kingdom ; gave the advowsons of Papists to the 
Universities ; granted to their new Majesties excise duties, 
land-taxes, and poll-taxes, for the " necessary defence of 



313 

the realm ; *' declared themselves to be the ^' two Houses 
of Parliament as legally as if they had been summoned 
according to the usual form : " and this they called a 
" glorious Revolution," as we Protestants call it to this 
present day. After " Reformation " the second, and upon 
the restoration of Charles, the palaces and livings, and 
other indestructible plunder, were restored to those from 
whom the ''thorough godly " had taken it, except however 
to the Catholic Irish, who had fought for this king's 
father, who had suffered most cruelly for this king him- 
self, and who were left still to be plundered by the 
'* thorough godly ; " which is an instance of ingratitude 
such as in no other case has been witnessed in the world. 
However, there were after the restoration men enough to 
contend that the episcopal palaces and other property, 
confiscated and granted away by the " thorough godly," 
ought not to be touched ; for that if those grants were 
resumed why not resume those of Henry VHI. ? Aye, 
why not indeed ! Here was a question to put to the 
Church clergy, and to the abbey land-owners ! If nine 
hundred years of quiet possession, and Magna Charta at 
the back of it, — if it were right to set these at nought for 
the sake of making only "a godly Reformation," why 
should not one hundred years of unquiet possession be set 
at nought for the sake of making " a thorough godly 
Reformation " ? How did the Church clergy answer this 
question? Why, Dr. Heylyn, who was Rector of Aires- 
ford, in Hampshire, and afterwards Dean of Westminster, 
who was a great enemy of the " thorough godly," though 
not much less an enemy of the Catholics, meets the 
question in this way, in the address at the head of his 
History of Reformation the first, where he says, " that 
there certainly must needs be a vast disproportion between 
such contracts as were founded upon acts of Parliament, 
legally passed by the king's authority, with the consent 
and approbation of the three estates, and those which have 



3H 

no other ground but the bare votes and orders of both 
Houses only. By the same logic it might be contended, 
that the two Houses alone have authority to depose a 
king."^ 

378. This church doctor died a little too soon, or he 
would have seen, not two Houses of Parliament, but a Lord 
Mayor of London, a parcel of Common Councilmen, and 
such other persons as chose to join them, actually setting 
aside one king and putting another upon the throne, and 
without any authority from King, Parliament, or people ; 
he would have heard this called " a glorious " thing ; and if 
he had lived to our day, he would have seen other equally 
" glorious " things grow directly out of it ; and that not- 
withstanding Blackstone had told the Americans that a 
** glorious " revolution was a thing never to be repeated. 
Doctor Heylyn would have heard them repeating, as 
applied to George HL, almost word for word the charges 
which the "glorious" people preferred against James H., 
though they, naughty Yankees, knew perfectly well that, 
after the '* glorious " affair, a King of England (being a 
Protestant) could ** do no wrong ! " The doctor's book, 
written to justify the " Reformation," did, as Pierre Orleans 
tells us,^ convert James H. and his first wife to the Catholic 
religion, but his preface above quoted did not succeed so 
well with Protestants. 

379. We shall in due time see something of the cost of 
this " glorious " revolution to the people ; but, first seeing 
that this revolution and the exclusion acts which followed it 



' Ecclesia Resiaurata. To the reader, sig. b. 

"^ D'Orleans, P.J. History of the Revolutions in England under the 
Stuarts (translated), 1722, p. 231, "It was at Brussels, after his leavingi 
France, when having leisure enough to read, he lighted upon Heylyn's 
History. He read it with attention, and plainly saw through all the 
pretexts the Protestants use for justifying their schism. ... By a strange 
accident the Duchess was converted upon reading the same book that had, 
wrought upon the Duke." 






315 

were founded upon the principle that the Catholic religion 
was incompatible with public freedom and justice, let us 
see what things this Catholic king had really done, and in 
what degree they were worse than things that had been 
and that have been done under Protestant sovereigns. As 
William and his Dutch army have been called our deliverers, 
let us see what it really was after all that they delivered 
the people from ; and here, happily, we have the statute- 
book to refer to, in which there still stands the list of 
charges drawn up against this Catholic king. However, 
before we examine these charges, we ought in common 
justice to notice certain things that James did not do. He 
did not, as Protestant Edward VI. had done, bring German 
troops into the country to enforce a change of religion ; nor 
did he, like that young saint, burn his starving subjects 
with a hot iron on the breast or on the forehead, and make 
them wear chains as slaves, as a punishment for endeavour- 
ing to relieve their hunger by begging. He did not, as 
Protestant Elizabeth had done, make use of whips, boring 
irons, racks, gibbets and ripping-knives to convert people 
to his faith, nor did he impose even any fines for this 
purpose; but, on the contrary, put, as far as he was able, an 
end to all persecution on account of religion. Oh ! but I 
am forgetting, for this we shall find amongst his Catholic 
crimes, — yes, amongst the proofs of his being a determined 
and intolerant popish tyrant ! — he did not, as Protestant 
Betsy had done, give monopolies to his court minions, so 
as to make salt, for instance, which in his day was about 
fourpence a bushel, fourteen pounds a bushel, and thus go 
on till at last the Parliament feared, as they did in the time 
of "good queen " Elizabeth, that there would be a monopoly 
even of bread. These were amongst the things which, 
being purely of Protestant birth, James, no doubt from 
" Catholic bigotry," did not do. And now let us come 
to the things which he really did, or at least which he 
was charged with having done. 



3i6 

380. Indictments do not generally come after judgment 
and execution, but for some cause or other the charges 
against James were postponed until the next year, when 
the crown had been actually given to the Dutchman and 
his wife. No matter ; they came out at last, and there 
they stand; twelve in number, in Act, 2 sess. Wm. and M., 
chap. 2. We will take them one by one, bearing in mind 
that they contained all that could even be said against this 
Popish king. 

Charge I, " That he assumed and exercised a power of 
dispensing with and suspending laws and the execution of 
laws without consent of Parliament." That is to say, he 
did not enforce those cruel laws against conscientious 
Catholics which had been enacted in former reigns. But 
did not Elizabeth and her successor, James I., dispense 
with or suspend laws when they took a composition from 
recusants ? Again, have we ourselves never seen any sus- 
pension of or dispensing with laws without consent of Par- 
liament ? Was there, and is there, no dispensing with the 
law in employing foreign officers in the English army, and 
in granting pensions from the Crown to foreigners ? And 
was there no suspension of the law when the bank stopped 
payment in 1797 ? And did the Parliament give its assent 
to the causing of that stoppage ? And has it ever given its 
assent to the putting of foreigners in offices of trust, civil 
or military, or to the granting of pensions from the Crown 
CO foreigners ? But did James ever suspend the Habeas 
Corpus Act ? Did his secretaries of state ever imprison 
whom they pleased, in any gaol or dungeon that they 
pleased, let the captives out when they pleased ? Ah ! 
but what he and his ministers did in this way (if they did 
anything) was all done '^ without consent of Parliament;" 
and who is so destitute of discrimination as not to per- 
ceive the astonishing difference between a dungeon with 
consent of Parliament and a dungeon without consent of 
Parliament I 



317 

Charge II. " That he committed and prosecuted divers 
worthy prelates for humbly petitioning to be excused from 
concurring to the said assumed powers." He prosecuted 
them as Hbellers and they were acquitted. But he com- 
mitted them before trial and conviction ; and why ? Because 
they refused to give bail, and they contended that it was 
tyranny in him to demand such bail ! Oh, heavens ! How 
many scores of persons have been imprisoned, for a similar 
refusal or for want of ability to give bail,. on a charge of 
libel during the last eight years ? Would not Mr. Clement 
have been imprisoned the other day only, if he had refused 
to give bail, not on a charge of libel on a king upon his 
throne, but on a Protestant professor of humanity ? And 
do not six acts, passed by a ParHament from which 
tyrannical CathoHcs are so effectually excluded, declare to 
us free Protestants that this has always been the law of 
the land ? And is that all ? Oh, no ! For we may now 
be banished for life, not only for libelling a king on his 
throne, but for uttering anything that has a tendency to 
bring either House of Parliament into contempt ! 

Charge III. *'That he issued a commission for erecting 
a court called the Court of Commissioners for Eccle- 
siastical Causes." Bless us ! What ! was this worse 
than ** good Queen " Elizabeth's real inquisition under 
the same name ? And, good God ! have we no court of 
this sort now ? And was not (no longer than about nine 
months ago) Sarah WalHs (a labourer's wife, of Hargrave, 
in Norfolk), for having *< brawled " in the churchyard, 
sentenced by this court to pay £2/\. os. ^d. costs ; and was 
she not sent to gaol for non-payment ; and must she not 
have rotted in gaol, having not a shilling in the world, if 
humane persons had not stepped forward to enable her to 
get out by the Insolvent Act ? And cannot this court now, 
agreeably to those of young Protestant Saint Edward's 
i| acts, in virtue of which the above sentence was passed, 
condemn any one who attempts to fight in a churchyard, 



3i8 

to have one ear cut off, and if the offender ''have no ears" 
(which speaks volumes as to the state of the people under 
Protestant Edward), then to be burnt with a hot iron in 
the cheek, and to be excommunicated besides? And did 
not the revolution Protestants, who drew up the charges 
against James, leave this law in full force for our benefit? 

Charge IV. ''That he levied money for and to the use 
of the Crown, by pretense of prerogative, for other time 
and in other manner than was granted by Parliament." 
It is not pretended that he levied more money than was 
granted; but he was not exact as to the time and manner. 
Did the Parliament grant Elizabeth the right to raise 
money by the sale of monoplies, by compositions with 
offenders, and by various other of her means? But did we 
not lately hear of the hop-duty payment being shifted from 
one year to another? Doubtless, with wisdom and mercy; 
but I very much doubt of James's ever having in this 
respect deviated from strict law to a greater amount, 
seeing that his whole revenue did not exceed (taking the 
difference in the value of money into account) much 
above sixteen times the amount of a good year's hop- 
duty. 

Charge V. "That he kept a standing army in time of 
peace without consent of Parliament." Ah! without 
consent of Parliament, indeed! That was very wicked. 
There were only seven or eight thousand men, to be sure, 
and such a thing as a barrack had never been heard of. 
But without consent of Parliament! Think of the vast 
difference between the prick of a bayonet coming without 
consent of a Parliament, and that of one coming with such 
consent? This King's father had been dethroned and his 
head had been cut off by an army kept up with consent of 
Parliament: mind that, however. Whether there were 
in the time of James any such affairs as that at Man- 
chester, on the memorable 16th of August, 1819, history is 
quite silent; nor are we told whether any of James's priests 
enjoyed military half-pay; nor are we informed whetho 



1 



319 

he gave half-pay or took it away at his pleasure, and 
without any '* consent of Parliament : " so that as to these 
matters we have no means of making a comparison. We 
are in the same situation with regard to foreign armies, for 
we do not find any account whatever of James's having 
brought any into England, and especially of his having 
caused foreign generals to command even the English 
troops, militia, and all, in whole districts of England. 

Charge VI. " That he caused several good subjects, 
being Protestants, to be disarmed at the same time that 
Papists were both armed and employed contrary to law." 
Six acts disarmed enough of the king's subjects : aye, but 
then these were not " good " ones, they wanted a reform 
of the House of Commons ; and besides, there was *' law " 
for this, and if people will not see what a surprising 
difference there is between being disarmed by law and 
disarmed by proclamation, it really is useless to spend 
valuable Protestant breath upon them. 

Charge VII. " That he violated the freedom of election 
of members to serve in Parliament." Oh, monstrous I 
Aye, and " notorious as the sun at noonday I " Come up, 
shades of sainted Perceval and Castlereagh ; come, voters 
of Sarum and Gatton ; assemble, ye sons of purity of elec- 
tion, living and dead, and condemn this wicked king for 
having " violated the freedom of elections ! " But come, 
we must not suffer this matter to pass off in the way of 
joke. Protestant reader, do you think that this " viola- 
ting of the freedom of elections for members to serve in 
Parliament " was a crime in King James ? He is not 
accused of having done all these things with his own 
tongue, pen, or hands, but with having done them with the 
aid of " divers wicked ministers and councillors." Well ; 
but do you, my Protestant readers, think that this viola- 
tion of the freedom of elections was a bad thing, and a 
proof of the wicked principles of Popery ? If you do, take 
the following facts, which ought to have a place in a work 



320 

like this, which truth and honour and justice demand to 
be recorded, and which I state as briefly as I possibly can. 
Know then, and be it for ever remembered, that CathoHcs 
have been excluded from the throne for more than a 
hundred years, that they have been excluded from the 
English Parliament ever since the reign of Charles II., 
and from the Irish Parliament ever since the twenty- 
second year of George III. ; that, therefore, the throne 
and the Parliament were filled exclusively with Protes- 
tants in the year 1809 ; that in 1779, long and long after 
Catholics had been shut out of the English Parliament, 
the House of Commons resolved, " that it is highly criminal 
for any minister or ministers, or any other servant of the 
crown in Great Britain, directly or indirectly, to make use 
of the power of his office in order to influence the election 
of members of Parliament, and that an attempt to exercise 
that influence is an attack upon the dignity, the honour, 
and the independence of Parliament, an infringement of 
the rights and the liberties of the people, and an attempt 
to sap the basis of our free and happy constitution." That 
in 1809, Lord Castlereagh, a minister and a privy coun- 
cillor, having been charged before the House with having 
had something to do about bartering a seat in the House, 
the House, on the 25th of April of that year, resolved, 
*' that while it was the bounden duty of that House to 
maintain at all times a jealous guard upon its purity, and 
not to suffer any attempt, upon its privileges to pass un- 
noticed, the attempt in the present instance (that of Lord 
Castlereagh and Mr. Reding) not having been carried into 
efliect, that House did not think it then necessary to pro- 
ceed to any criminating resolutions respecting the same." 
That on the nth of May, 1809 (only sixteen days after 
this last resolution was passed), William Madocks, Mem- 
ber for Boston, made a charge in the following words, to 
wit : — ** I affirm, then, that Mr. Dick purchased a seat in 
the House of Commons for the borough of Cashel, through 



II 



321 

the agency of the Honourable Henry Wellesley, who 
acted for and on behalf of the Treasury ; that upon a 
recent question of the last importance, when Mr. Dick 
had determined to vote according to his conscience, the 
noble Lord Castlereagh did intimate to that gentleman 
the necessity of either his voting with the government or the 
resigning his seat in that House, and that Mr. Dick, 
sooner than vote against his principles, did make choice of 
the latter alternative and vacate his seat accordingly, and 
that to this transaction I charge the right honourable 
gentleman, Mr. Perceval, as being privy and having con- 
nived at it. This I engage to prove by witnesses at your 
bar, if the House will give me leave to call them." That 
having made his charge, Mr. Madocks made a motion for 
inquiry into the matter ; that after a debate the question 
was put to the vote ; that there were three hundred and 
ninety-five members in the House, — all Protestants, mind ; 
that (come up and hear it, you accusers of James and the 
Catholic reHgion !) there were eighty-five for an inquiry, 
and three hundred and ten against it ! That this same 
Protestant Parliament did, in 1 819, on the motion of that 
very same Lord Castlereagh, pass a law by which any of 
us now may be banished for life for publishing any thing 
having a tendency to bring that very House into contempt ! 
That this Lord Castlereagh was Secretary of State for 
Foreign Affairs ; that he continued to be the leading 
minister in the House of Commons (exclusively Protes- 
tant) until the close of the session of 1822, which took 
place on the 6th of August of that year ; that on the 12th 
of that same month of August he cut his own throat and 
killed himself at North Cray in Kent ; that a coroner's jury 
declared him to have been insane, and that the evidence 
showed that he had been insane for several weeks, though 
he had been the leader of the House up to the 6th of 
August, and though he was at the moment when he killed 
himself Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and also 
21 



322 

temporary Secretary for the Home Department and that of 
the Colonies; that his body was buried in Westminster 
Abbey church, mourned over by his colleagues, and that as 
it was taken out of the hearse a great assemblage of the 
people gave loud and long-continued cheers of exultation. 

Charge VIII. " That he promoted prosecutions in the 
Court of King's Bench for matters and things cognizable 
only in Parliament, and that he did divers other arbitrary 
and unlawful things." That is to say that he brought 
before a jury matters which the Parliament wished to keep 
to itself! Oh, naughty and arbitrary king! to have jury 
trial for the deeds of Parliament men, instead of letting 
them try themselves ! As to the divers other such arbitrary 
things, they not being specified we cannot say what they 
were. 

Charge IX. " That he caused juries to be composed of 
partial, corrupt and unqualified persons who were not free- 
holders." Very bad if true, of which, however, no proof 
and no instance is attempted to be given. One thing, at 
any rate ; there were no special juries in those days. They, 
which are " appointed " by the Master of the Crown Office, 
came after Catholic kings were abolished. But not to 
mention that Protestant Betsy dispensed with juries alto- 
gether when she pleased, and tried and punished even 
vagabonds and rioters by martial law, do we not now, in our 
own free and enlightened and liberal Protestant days, see 
many men transported for seven years without any jury at 
all ? Aye, and that, too, in numerous cases only for being 
more than fifteen minutes at a time out of their houses 
(which the law calls their castles) between sunset and 
sunrise ? Ah ! but this is with consent of ParHament ! 
Oh ! I had forgotten that. That's an answer. 

Charge X. ** That excessive bail hath " (by the judges, 
of course) *' been required of persons committed in criminal 
cases, to elude the benefit of the laws made for the liberty 
of the subject." 



323 

Charge XI. "That excessive fines have been imposed 
and illegal and cruel punishments inflicted." 

Charge XII. " That he had made promises and grants 
of fines before conviction and judgment on the party." 

381. I take these three charges together. As to fines 
and bail, look at Protestant Elizabeth's and Protestant 
James I.'s. reign. But coming to our own times, I, for 
having expressed my indignation at the flogging of English 
local militia men in the heart of England, under a guard of 
German troops, was two years imprisoned in a felon's gaol, 
and at the expiration of the time had to pay a fine of a 
thousand pounds, and to give bail for seven years, myself 
in three thousand pounds, with two sureties in two thousand 
pounds each. 

Until, therefore, some zealous admirer of the "glorious 
revolution " will be pleased to furnish us with something 
specific as to the bail and fines in James's reign, we ought 
in prudence to abstain from even any mention of this 
charge against the unfortunate king, for to talk of them in 
too censorious a strain may possibly receive a no very 
charitable interpretation. But there had been illegal and 
cruel punishments in his reign. What punishments ? 
There had been no people burnt, there had been no racks, 
as there had been in the reigns of Protestant Elizabeth and 
James I. Why, Sir John Cox Hippesley, in a petition to 
Parliament a year or two ago, asserted that the tread-mill 
was '* cruel and illegal." Yet it stands, and that, too, for 
very trifling offences. Sir John might be wrong, but this 
shows that there might also be two opinions about punish- 
ments in the time of James, and we have to lament that 
those who brought in "the deliverer" were so careless. as 
to specify none of those instances which might have enabled 
us to make as to this matter a comparison between a 
Catholic king and a Protestant one. But he granted away 
fines before the conviction of the party. Indeed ! What, 
then, we have in our happy day, under a Protestant king, 



324 

no fines granted beforehand to informers of any sort ? Ah ! 
but this is with consent of Parliament ! I had forgotten 
that again : I am silenced ! 

382. These were the offences of King James; these were 
the grounds, as recorded in the statute-book of the 
" glorious revolution " made, as the same act expresses, to 
" deliver this kingdom from Popery and arbitrary power, and 
to prevent the Protestant religion from being subverted ; " 
and seeing that this was immediately followed by a per- 
petual exclusion of Catholics, and those who should marry 
with Catholics, from the throne, it is clear that this was a 
revolution entirely Protestant, and that it was an event 
directly proceeding from the " Reformation."' This being 
the case, I should now proceed to take a view of the conse- 
quences, and particularly of the costs of this grand change, 
which was " Reformation " the third. But there are still 
to notice some things which lying history and vulgar 
prejudice urge against this unfortunate Catholic king, who 
has been asserted to have been the adviser of his late 
brother in all those deeds which have been deemed wicked, 
and especially in the putting of Lord Russell and Algernon 
Sidney to death for high treason. 

383. Alas ! how have we been deluded upon this subject ! 
I used to look upon these as two murdered men. A com- 
pulsion to look into realities and to discard romance has 
taught me the contrary. The Protestants were, in the 
reign of Charles II., continually hatching Popish plots, and, 
by contrivances the most diabolical, bringing innocent 



'The Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, set "aside not only the pre- 
tended Prince of Wales and a younger daughter of James the Second, but 
the Duchess of Savoy, a daughter of Henrietta of Orleans, and other 
claimants nearer in blood, as disqualified by their profession of the 
Catholic religion." It " vested the right to the crown in Sophia, Electress- 
Dowager of Hanover, a child of the Queen of Bohemia and a grand- 
daughter of James the First, and the heirs of her body being Protestants." 
Green, Short History of the English People^ p. 683. 



325 

Catholics to the scaffold and the gibbet ; and in the course 
of these their proceedings they were constantly denying 
the prerogative of the king to pardon or to mitigate the 
punishment of their victims. But at last the king got 
real proof of a Protestant plot ! The king was ill, and a 
conspiracy was formed for setting aside his brother by force 
of arms if the king should die. The king recovered, but 
the Protestant plot went on. The scheme was, to rise in 
arms against the Government, to pay and bring in an army 
of Protestants from Scotland, and in short, to make now 
that sort of ** Reformation " the third which did not take 
place till, as we have seen, some years afterwards. In this 
Protestant plot Russell and Sidney were two great leaders. 
Russell did not attempt to deny that he had had a part in 
the conspiracy, his only complaint was that the indictment 
was not agreeable to law ; but he was told, which was true, 
that it was perfectly agreeable to numerous precedents in 
cases of trials of Popish plotters ! When brought to the 
place of execution Russell did not deny his guilt, but did 
not explicitly confess it. That part of his sentence which 
ordered his bowels to be ripped out while he was yet alive, 
and his body to be quartered, was, at the intercession of his 
family, remitted by the king, who, in yielding to their 
prayer, cuttingly said, " My Lord Russell shall find that 
I am possessed of that prerogative which, in the case of 
Lord Strafford, he thought fit to deny me." 

384. As to Sidney, he had been one of the leading men 
ir. the "thorough godly" work of the last reign, and had 
even been one of the Commissioners for trying Charles L 
and bringing him to the block, though it is said by his 
friends he did not actually sit at the trial. At the restora- 
tion of Charles IL he had taken refuge abroad. But hav- 
ing confessed the errors of his younger years and promised 
to be loyal in future, this king, under the guidance of a 
Popish brother, pardoned him, great as his offences had 
been. Yet after this he conspired to destroy the govern- 



326 

ment of that king, or, at the very least, to set aside that 
brother, and this, too, observe, by force of arms, by open 
rebellion against the king who had pardoned him, and by 
plunging into all the horrors of another civil war that 
country which he had before assisted to desolate. If any 
man ever deserved an ignominious death this Sidney de- 
served his. He did not deny, he could not deny, that the 
conspiracy had existed, and that he was one of its chiefs. 
He had no complaint but one, and that related to the 
evidence against him. There was only one parole witness 
to his acts, and in cases of high treason the law of England 
required two. And here it was that a blush might (if it 
were possible) have been raised upon the cheeks of these 
revilers of Popery; for this very law, this law which has 
saved the lives of so many innocent persons, this law 
which ought to engrave gratitude to its author on the 
heart of every Englishman, this law came from that very 
Popish Queen Mary, whom artful knaves have taught 
generations of thoughtless people to call *'the bloody," 
while, too, she was the wife of, and had for coadjutor, 
that Philip II., whom to hold up as a sanguinary Popish 
tyrant has been a great object with all our base de- 
luders. 

385. Seeing, however, that Sidney had such a strong 
attachment to this Popish law, and that there really was 
but one witness against him ; seeing that he could not bear 
the thought of dying without two witnesses against him, 
the crown lawyers (all Protestants, mind, who had adjured 
the "damnable errors of Popery") contrived to accommo- 
date him with a couple by searching his drawers and mak- 
ing up a second witness out of his own papers. It was in 
vain that he rested upon this flaw in the proceedings; all 
men knew that hundreds of Catholics had suffered death 
upon evidence slight indeed compared with that against 
him; men were not to be amused with this miserable spe- 
cial plea, and all men of sense and justice concurred in the 
opinion that he received substantial justice and no more. 



327 

386. So much for the " good old cause for which Hamp- 
den died in the field and Sidney on the scaffold." What 
credulous creatures we have been, and who more so than 
myself ? Aye, but these Protestant patriots only contem- 
plated insurrection and the introduction of foreign armies. 
And with what more was O'Quigly charged only about 
twenty-seven years ago ? With what more were the 
Shearses and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Watt, and 
Downie, and Despard, and scores of others charged ? And 
were Thistlewood, Ings, Brunt and Tidd charged with 
more ? Oh no ! but with a great deal less ; and they 
suffered, not for compassing the death of the king, but of 
his ministers, a crime made high treason for the first time 
in our own Protestant days and by a Parliament from 
which tyrannical Popish people are wholly excluded. 
There was one Keiling, who from a Protestant plotter 
became an informer ; and he, in order to fortify his own 
evidence, introduced his brother-in-law to the conspirators 
in order to betray them and bring them to justice. Well, 
but have we not had our Castleses, our Olivers and our 
Edwardses, and has not Mr. Brougham said in the House 
of Commons that " while there are such men as Ings in 
the world there must be such men as Edwards ? " How- 
ever, no historian, Protestant as he may have been, enemy 
as he may have been of Charles's and James's memory, 
ever had the impudence to impute to either of them the 
having employed people to instigate others to commit acts 
of high treason, and then bringing those others to the block 
while they rewarded the instigators. 

387. It is said, and I think truly, that Charles II. was at 
one time in pecuniary treaty with the king of France for the 
purpose of re-establishing the Catholic Church in England. 
Well, had not he as much right to do this as Edward VI. 
had to bring over German troops to root out that ancient 
Church which had been established for 900 years, and 
which was guaranteed to the people by Magna Charta ? 



328 

And if doing this by means of French troops were intended 
by Charles, can that be complained of by those who ap- 
prove of the bringing in of Dutch troops to " settle " the 
kingdom ? After all, however, if it were such a deadly sin 
for a Popishly advised king of England to be in a pecuniary 
treaty with the king of France, which treaty neither king 
nor Catholics ever acted upon, what was it in the Protes- 
tant and Catholic-hating Sidney and the younger Hampden 
and Armstrong and others to be real and bona fide and 
money-touching pensioners of that same king of France, 
which fact has become unquestionable from Dalrymple's 
Memoirs, page 315 of Appendix ? 

388. But now, if James be to be loaded with all those 
which have been called the bad deeds of his brother's 
reign, we cannot, with common justice, refuse him the 
merit of the good deeds of that reign. This reign gave us 
then, the Act of Habeas Corpus, which Blackstone calls 
the " second Great Charter of English Liberty." There 
are many other acts of this reign, tending to secure the 
liberties and all the rights of the people ; but if there had 
been only this one act, ought not it alone to have satisfied 
the people that they had nothing to apprehend from a 
Popishly inclined king on the throne ? Here these 
" Popish tyrants," Charles and James, gave up, at one 
stroke of the pen, at a single writing of Charles's name, all 
prerogatives enabling them, as their predecessors had been 
enabled, to put people into prison and to keep them there 
in virtue of a mere warrant or order from a minister. And 
was this a proof of that arbitrary disposition of which we 
hear them incessantly accused ? We are always boasting 
about this famous Act of Habeas Corpus, but never have 
we the gratitude to observe that it came from those against 
whom Russell and Sidney conspired, and the last of whom 
was finally driven from his palace by the Dutch guards in 
1688. 
389. Then again, was this act ever suspended during 



329 

the reigns of these Popish kings ? Never, not even for a 
single day. But the moment the " glorious revolution " 
or Reformation the third came, the Dutch " deliverer " 
was, by the Protestant " Convention," whose grand busi- 
ness it was to get rid of " arbitrary power," — the moment 
that this ''glorious" affair had taken place, that moment 
was the Dutch "deliverer" authorised to put in prison, 
and to keep there, any Englishman that he or his ministers 
might suspect ! But why talk of this ? We ourselves 
have seen this" second Great Charter of English Hberty " 
suspended for seven years at a time ; and besides this, we 
have seen the king and his ministers authorised to im- 
prison any one they chose to imprison, in any gaol that 
they chose, in any dungeon that they chose, to keep the 
imprisoned person from all communication with friends, 
wives, husbands, fathers, mothers and children, to prevent 
them from the use of pen, ink, paper, and books, to deny 
them the right of being confronted with their accusers, to 
refuse them a specification of their offence, and the names 
of their accusers ; to put them out of prison (if alive), when 
they pleased, without any trial ; and at last, to hold them 
to bail for good behaviour, and that too, mind, still without 
stating to them the names of the witnesses against them, 
or even the nature of their offence ! All this we have seen 
done in our own dear Protestant times, while our Parlia- 
ment-house and our pulpits ring with praises of the 
" glorious revolution " that " delivered us from Popery and 
slavery." 

390. There was another great thing, too, done in the 
reigns of these Popish kings, namely ; the settling of the 
Provinces (now States) of America. Virginia had been 
attempted to be settled under Elizabeth, by that unprin- 
cipled minion, Sir Walter Raleigh, who in the next reign 
lost on the scaffold that Hfe which he ought to have lost 
thirty years before ; but the attempt wholly failed. A little, 
and very little, was done in the succeeding reigns. It was 
not until that of Charles II. that charters and patents were 



330 

granted, that property became real, and that consequent 
population and prosperity came. This was a great event, 
great in itself and greater in its consequences, some of 
which consequences we have already felt, others we are 
now feeling, but others, and by far of greater moment, 
we have yet to feel. 

391. All these fine colonies were made by this Popishly 
inclined king and by his really Popish brother. Two of 
them, the Carolinas, take their name from the king him- 
self ; another, and now the greatest of all, New York, from 
the king's brother, who was duke of the city of that name 
in old England. These were the men who planted these 
the finest and happiest colonies that the sun ever lighted 
and warmed. They were planted by these Popish people ; 
from them, from their ** mere motion," as the law calls it, 
came those charters and patents without which those 
countries might to this hour have been little better than a 
wilderness. From these Popish kings the colonies came. 
By whom were they lost ? Not by abused and calum- 
niated Papists at any rate. Our Popish ancestors had at 
different times made England mistress of different parts of 
France. Protestant Edward VI. lost Boulogne, and Pro- 
testant Elizabeth bartered away Calais and the county of 
Oye for 100,000 crowns, and thus put her Protestant seal 
to England's everlasting expulsion from the continent 
of Europe. After one more Protestant reign, inglorious 
beyond all example, came these two Popish kings, who 
planted countries which were more than a compensation 
for the European loss. Then came that *' glorious " affair ; 
and it furnished all those principles by which, at the 
end of only about seventy years, this compensation was 
wrested from us, — and not only this, but by which was 
created a power, a great maritime power, at the very 
name of which, affect what they may, Englishmen, once so 
high and daring, now grow pale. 

392. We shall before the close of the next number, and 
after we have taken a view of the torments inflicted on the 



331 

Catholicy Jrish and English) in the reigns of WilHam, 
Anne, snid the Georges, trace this *' Reformation " the 
fourth directly back to " Reformation " the third; we shall 
show that, in spite of the fine reasoning of Blackstone, the 
deeds of the " Convention " were things to be imitated ; 
we shall find that the list of charges against James, drawn 
up by She *' Lord Mayor of London, Aldermen, Common 
Councilmen and others," was as handy in 1776 as it had 
been in 1688 ; we shall find this Reformation the third 
producing in its progress that monster in legislation, that 
new and heretofore unheard-of species of tyranny called 
Bills of Pains and Penalties, which are of pure Protestant 
origin ; and we shall finally see that this famous and 
*' glorious " affair, all Protestant as it was, did at last 
bring, though it crossed the Atlantic to fetch it, that dawn 
of liberty which the Catholics began to behold at the end 
of a night of cruel slavery which had lasted for more than 
two hundred years. But I must not even here, lest it 
should not occur to my mind again, omit to notice, and to 
request the reader to notice, that of the above-mentioned 
colonies the only ones that wholly abstained from 
religious persecution, the only ones that from the first 
settling proclaimed complete religious liberty, were those 
granted by patent to the Duke of York (afterwards the 
Catholic James IL), to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic noble- 
man, and to William Penn, who suffered long imprison- 
ment for his adherence to this Popish king. We shall, 
by-and*by, find all the colonies cordially united in declar- 
ing the character of a Protestant king to be " marked by 
every act that may define a tyrant ; " but this much we 
know, at any rate, — that the colonies granted to and settled 
by Catholics, and by Penn, an adherent of James, were the 
only ones that had from first to last proclaimed and strictly 
adhered to complete freedom as to matters of religion, and 
that, too, after the Protestants at home had for more than 
a hundred years been ijiost cruelly ai?i.(| unremittingly per- 
jsecuting the Catholics. 



33^ 



CHAPTER XIV. 

393. We have seen in the foregoing chapter that Reforma 
tion the third, commonly called the "Glorious Revolution," 
grew directly out of the Reformation the second, and we 
are now to see Reformation the fourth, commonly called 
"the American Revolution," grow directly out of Reforma- 
tion the third ; and we are, before we get to the end of this 
present chapter, to see how severely the English people 
have been scourged, and how much more severely they are 
likely still to be scourged in consequence of these several 
*' Reformations," which have all proceeded from Reforma- 
tion the first, as naturally as the stem and the branches of 
the tree proceed from the root. 

394. We have seen that King James and his family 
were set aside because they were Catholics ; and we are to 
bear that in mind, not forgetting at the same time that Alfred 
the Great was a Catholic, and that those kings of England 
who really conquered France and won that title of King 
of France which George III. gave up, were also Catholics. 
But we are now particularly to bear in mind that James, 
an Englishman, was set aside, that William, a Dutchman, 
was made king in his stead, and that James's heirs were 
set aside too, because he and they were Catholics. Bear- 
ing these things constantly in mind, we shall now see what 
took place, and how the "Protestant Reformation" worked 
till it produced the debt, the banks, the stock-jobbers and 
the American Revolution. 

395. James found faithful adherents in his Irish subjects^ 



333 

who fought and bled in his cause with all that bravery and 
disregard of life of which so many Irishmen have given 
proof. But with the aid of Dutch and German armies 
paid by England the " Deliverer " finally triumphed over 
James and the Irish, and the whole kingdom submitted 
to the sway of the former. It is hardly necessary to say 
that the Catholics were now doomed to suffer punishments 
heretofore unknown, and that if their faith still existed in 
the kingdom, it could scarcely be owing to anything short 
of the immediate superintendence of Providence. The 
oppressions which they had had to endure under former 
sovereigns were terrible enough, but now began a series of 
acts against them such as the world never heard of before. 
I shall, further on, have to give a sketch at least of these 
acts, which we shall find going on increasing in number 
and in severity, and at last presenting a mass of punish- 
ment which but to think of makes one's blood run cold, 
when all of a sudden, in the eighteenth year of George III., 
came the American Revolution, which grew out of the 
English Revolution, and (mark the justice of God !) which 
produced the first relaxation in this most dreadfully penal 
code. 

396. But how did the American Revolution grow out 
of the Dutch Deliverer's or " Glorious " Revolution ? A 
very pertinent and important question, my friends, and 
one that it is my duty to answer in the fullest and most 
satisfactory manner, for this points to the very hfeart of my 
subject. We shall by-and-by see the American Revolu- 
tion producing wonderful events, and therefore we must 
with the greatest possible care trace it to its true source, 
especially as in all human probabiHty this nation has yet 
to receive from that quarter blows far heavier than it has 
ever yet had to sustain. 

397. The " Protestant Deliverer " had in the first place 
brought over a Dutch army for the EngHsh nation to 
support. Next there were the expenses and bloodshed pi 



334 






I 



a civil war to endure for the sake of the "deliverance from 
Popery." But these, though they produced suffering 
enough, were a mere nothing compared to what was to 
follow, for this was destined to scourge the nation for ag 
and ages yet to come, and to produce in the end effect 
that the human mind can hardly contemplate wit 
steadiness. 

398. King James had, as we have seen, been received in' 
France. Louis XIV. treated him as King of England, 
Scotland, and Ireland. William hated Louis for this, and 
England had to pay for that hatred. All those who had 
assisted in a conspicuous manner to bring in the " De- 
liverer " were now embarked in the same boat with him. 
They were compelled to humour and to yield to him. 
They, historians say, wished to give the crown solely to 
his wife, because, she being James's daughter, there would 
have been less of revolution in this than in giving the 
crown to an utter alien. But he flatly told them that he 
"would not hold his power by the apron strings," and, the 
dispute having continued for some time, he cut the matter 
short with them by declaring that if they did not give him 
the crown he would go back to Holland and leave them 
to their old sovereign ! This was enough ; they gave him 
the crown without more hesitation, and they found that 
they had got not only a " deliverer " but a master at the 
same time. 

399. The same reasons that induced a submission to this 
conduct in the " Deliverer," induced the same parties to go 
cordially along with him in his war against France. There 
was James in France ; a great part of his people were still 
for him ; if France were at peace with England the com- 
munication could not be cut off. Therefore war with 
France was absolutely necessary to the maintenance of 
WilHam on the throne; and if he were driven from the 
throne, what was to become of those who had obtained 
from him, as the price of their services in bringing him in, 



335 

immense grants of crown lands and various other enor- 
mous emoluments, none of which they could expect to 
retain for a day if James were restored ? Besides this, 
there was the danger, and very great danger, too, to their 
own estates and their lives; for though that which they did 
was and is called a " glorious revolution," it would, if 
James had been restored, have been called by a very differ- 
ent name ; and that name would not have been an empty 
sound, it would have been applied to very practical pur- 
poses, and the chances are that very few of the principal 
actors would have wholly escaped. And there were, 
moreover, the possessors of the immense property of the 
Church founded and endowed by our fathers. The con- 
fiscation of this was not yet of so ancient a date as to have 
been forgotten. Tradition is very long-lived. Many and 
many then alive knew all the story well. They had heard 
their grandfathers say that the Catholic Church kept all 
the poor, that the people were then better off; and they 
felt, the whole of the people felt, that England had lost by 
the change. Therefore, in case of the restoration of James, 
the possessors of Church property, whether they were lay 
or clerical, might reasonably have their fears. 

400. Thus, all these deeply interested parties, who were 
also the most powerful parties in the kingdom, were for a 
war with France, which they rightly regarded as absolutely 
necessary to the keeping of William on the throne, and 
to the quiet enjoyment of their great possessions, if not 
actually to the safety of their lives. This ought therefore 
to have been called " a war to preserve Church property, 
crown lands and other great emoluments, to their present 
possessors." But those who make wars, like those who 
make confiscations of property belonging to the Church 
and poor, generally know how to give them a good name, 
and accordingly this was called and proclaimed as a war 
*' to preserve the Protestant religion, and to keep out 
Popery and slavery." It was a real "no-popery" war. 



336 

and though attended with the most dreadful consequences 
to the nation, it answered all the purposes of its inventors. 
The history of this war as an affair of fighting is of little 
consequence to us. It was, indeed, attended in this re- 
spect with disgrace enough, but it answered the great 
object of its inventors. It did not hurt France, it did not 
get rid of James and his son, but it made the English 
people identify their old king and his son with the foreign 
enemies of England ! That was what the inventors of the 
war wanted, and that they completely got. It was in vain 
that King James protested that he meant no harm to 
England ; it was in vain that he reminded the people that 
he had been compelled to flee to France ; in vain his de- 
clarations that the French only wanted to assist in restor- 
ing him to his rights. They saw him in France, they saw 
the French fighting for him and against England, that was 
quite sufficient. Men do not reason in such a case, and 
this the inventors of this war knew very well. 

401. But though passion muddles the head, though even 
honest feeling may silence the reasoning faculties, the purse 
is seldom to be quieted so easily ; and this war, though 
for " the preservation of the Protestant religion and for 
keeping out Popery and slavery," soon began to make 
some most dreadful tugs at this most sensitive part of 
those accoutrements that almost make part and parcel of 
the human frame. -The expenses of this famous *' no- 
popery " war. . . . Good God ! what has this kingdom 
not suffered for that horrid and hypocritical cry ! . . . The 
expenses of this famous "no-popery" war were enormous. 
The taxes were, of course, in proportion to those expenses, 
and the people, who already paid more than four times as 
much as they had paid in the time of James, began not 
only to murmur but to give no very insignificant signs of 
sorrow for having been *' delivered ! " France was power- 
ful, the French king liberal and zealous, and the state of 
things was ticklish. Force, as far as law and the suspen- 



337 

sion of law could go, was pretty fairly put in motion ; but 
a scheme was at last hit upon to get the money, and yet 
not to tug so very hard at that tender part, the purse. 

402. An Act of Parliament was passed in the year 1694, 
being the 5th year of William and Mary, chapter 20, the 
title of which act is in the following words, — words that 
every man should bear in mind, words fatal to the peace 
and the happiness of England, words which were the pre- 
cursor of a scourge greater than ever before afflicted any 
part of God's creation : — " An Act for granting to their 
Majesties several rates and duties upon tonnage of ships 
and vessels, and upon beer, ale, and other liquors, for 
securing certain recompenses and advantages in the said 
Act mentioned, to such persons as shall voluntarily ad- 
vance the sum of fifteen hundred thousand pounds towards 
carrying on the war against France." This act lays 
certain duties, sufficient to pay the interest of this sum 
of ;^i, 500,000. Then it points out the manner of sub- 
scribing, the mode of paying the interest, or annuities, and 
then it provides that, if so much of the whole sum be 
subscribed by such a time, the subscribers shall have a 
charter under the title of '* The Governor and Company 
of the Bank of England " ! 

403. Thus arose loans, funds, banks, bankers, bank- 
notes, and a national debt ; things that England had 
never heard or dreamed of before this war *' for preserving 
the Protestant religion as by law established ; " things 
without which she had had a long and glorious career of 
man»y centuries, and had been the greatest and happiest 
country in the world ; things which she never would and 
never could have heard of, had it not been for what is 
audaciously called the " Reformation," seeing that to lend 
money at interest, that is to say, for gain, that is to say to 
receive money for the use of money, seeing that to do this 
was contrar}^ and still is contrary to the principles of 
the Catholic Church, and amongst Christians or pro- 

22 



33^ 

fessors of Christianity such a thing was never heard ^o! 
before that which is impudently called " the Reformation." 
The Rev. Mr. O'Callaghan, in his excellent little work,: 
which I had the honour to republish last winter/ and 
which ought to be read by every man, and especially 
every young man, in the kingdom, has shown that thej 
ancient philosophers, the Fathers of the Church, both 
Testaments, the Canons of the Church, and the decisions! 
of Pope and Councils, all agree, all declare that to take ] 
money for the use of money is sinful. Indeed, no such 
thing was ever attempted to be justified until the savage 
Henry VIII. had cast off the supremacy of the Pope. 
Jews did it ; but, then, Jews had no civil rights. They 
existed only by mere sufferance. They could be shut up, 
or banished, or even sold at the king's pleasure. They 
were regarded as a sort of monsters, who professed to be 
the lineal descendants and to hold the opinions of those 
who had murdered the Son of God and the Saviour of 
men. They were not permitted to practise their blas- 
phemies openly. If they had synagogues they were unseen 
by the people. The horrid wretches themselves were 
compelled to keep out of public view on Sundays and on 
saints' days. They were not allowed to pollute with their 
presence the streets or the roads of a Christian country 
on days set apart for public devotion. In degraded 
wretches like these usury, that is, receiving money for the 
use of money, was tolerated just for the same cause that 
incest is tolerated amongst dogs. 

404. How far the ' ase spirit of usury may now have 
crept in even amongst Catholics themselves I know not, 
nor is it of importance as to the matter immediately before 
me. It is certain that before the " Reformation " there 



• J. O'Callaghan, Usury, or Lending at Interest^ 1825. The book was 
first published in New York in the summer of 1824, and was a second 
time published in England by Cobbett in 1828. 



339 

was no such thing known amongst Christians as receiving 
money or profit in any shape, merely for the use of money. 
It would be easy to show that mischiefs enormous are 
inseparable from such a practice, but we shall see enough 
of those mischiefs in the end. Suffice it for the present, 
that this national usury, which was now invented for the 
first time, arose out of the *' Reformation." 

405. This monstrous thing, the usury or funding system, 
was not only a Protestant invention, not only arose out of 
the " Reformation," not only was established for the 
express purpose of carrying on a war for the preservation 
of this Church of England against the efforts of Popery, 
but the inventor, Burnet, was the most indefatigable 
advocate for the " Reformation " that had ever existed. 
So that the thing was not only invented by Protestants to 
do injury to Catholics, it was not only intended by them 
for this purpose, it was not only destined by the wisdom 
and justice of God to be a scourge, to be the most terrible 
of all scourges to the Protestants themselves, it was not 
only destined to make, at last, the " Church by law 
established " look at the usurers with no very quiet feel- 
ings, the thing was not only thus done and thus destined 
to operate, but the instrument was the fittest, the very 
fittest, that could have been found in the whole world. 

406. Burnet, whose first name, as the Scotch call it, was 
Gilbert, was in the first place a political church parson, 
next he was a monstrously lying historian, next he was a 
Scotchman, and lastly he received the thanks of Parlia- 
ment for his History of the Reformation, that is to say, a 
mass of the most base falsehoods and misrepresentations 
that ever were put upon paper; so that the instrument 
was the very fittest that could have been found on earth. 
This man had, at the accession of James II., gone to 
Holland, where he became secretary to William (after- 
wards the '' Deliverer "), and where he corresponded with 
and aided the " Glorious Revolutionizers " in England, 



140 



and in 1689, t^® Y^^^ ^^^^ t^Q "deliverance," the 
" Deliverer " made him Bishop of Salisbury as a reward 
for his " glorious revolution " services. 

407. This was the fittest man in the world to invent 
that which was destined to be a scourge to England. 
Though become a bishop he was still a most active 
politician ; and when the difficulty of carrying on the *' no- 
popery " war arose, and when those fears mentioned in 
paragraph 401 began to be powerful, this bishop of the 
" law-established Church " it was who invented, who 
advised, and who, backed by the " Deliverer," caused to 
be adopted the schemes of borrowing, of mortgaging the 
taxes, and of pawning the property and labour of future 
generations. Pretty " deliverance " ! Besides sparing the 
purses of the people and quieting their discontents on 
account of taxes, this scheme had a further and still more 
important object in view, namely, to make all those who 
had money to lend wish to see the new king and new 
dynasty and all the grants and emoluments of the 
" glorious revolution " folks upheld. That was the per- 
manent object of this ** no popery " project. 

408. The case was this, and we ought clearly to under- 
stand it, seeing that here is the true origin of all our 
present alarms, dangers and miseries. James II. and his 
son had been set aside because they were Catholics, a 
" glorious revolution " had been made, the great makers of 
it had immense possessions, which had been public or 
Church possessions. If James were restored all these 
would be taken from them, together with all the titles of 
nobility, all the bishoprics, and in short everything granted 
by the "Deliverer." And as the "Deliverer" was liable 
to die, it was necessary to these great possessors and 
** glorious " actors to take care, if possible, that James or 
his son should not be the successors of the "Deliverer." 
Acts of Parliament were passed to provide against this 
danger ; but still, experience had shown that acts of 



341 

Parliament were in some cases of but little avail when 
the great body of the people, feeling acutely, were opposed 
to them. Therefore something was wanted to bind great 
numbers of the people fast to the new dynasty. The cry 
of " no popery " had some power, but it had not power 
sufficient to weigh down that which, in later times, 
Castlereagh had the insolence to call the "ignorant im- 
patience of taxation," and for which impatience the 
English were in former times always remarkable. 

409. The " Deliverer" and all those who had brought him 
in, together with all those who had been fattened or ele- 
vated by him, were, as I said before, embarked in the 
same boat : but the great body of the people were not yet 
thus embarked. Indeed, very few of them, comparatively, 
were thus embarked. But if all, or a great part of those 
who had money to lend, could by the temptation of great 
gain be induced to lend their money on interest to the 
government, if they could be induced to do this, it was 
easy to see that all this description of persons would then 
be embarked in the same boat too ; and that they who 
must necessarily be a class having great influence in the 
community would be amongst the most zealous supporters 
of the "Deliverer," and the "glorious" aiders, abettors, 
and makers of the " revolution" which had just taken 
place. 

410. For these purposes this funding system was in- 
vented. It had the two-fold object of raising money to 
carry on the " no-popery " war and of binding to the "no- 
popery " government all those persons who wished to lend 
money at high interest, and these were, as is always the 
case, the most greedy, most selfish, least public-spirited, 
and most base and slavish and unjust part of the people. 
The scheme, which was quite worthy of the mind of the 
Protestant Bishop Burnet, answered its purposes: it enabled 
the " Deliverer " to carry on the " no-popery " war, it 
bound fast to the " Deliverer " and his bringers-in all the 



342 

base and selfish and greedy and unfeeling part of those 
who had money. The scheme succeeded in effecting its 
immediate objects, but, good God ! what a scourge did it 
provide for future generations ! What troubles, what 
shocks, what sufferings it had in store for a people whose 
rulers, in an evil hour, resorted to such means for the pur- 
pose of causing to be trampled under foot those whose only 
crime was that of adhering to the faith of their fathers! 
411. The sum at first borrowed was a mere trifle. It 
deceived by its seeming insignificance. But it was very 
far from being intended to stop with that trifle. The in- 
ventors knew well what they were about. Their design 
was to mortgage, by degrees, the whole of the country, 
all the lands, all the houses, and all other property, and 
even all labour, to those who would lend their money to 
the state. The thing soon began to swell at a great rate, 
and before the end of the *' glorious " no-popery war, the 
interest alone of the debt, the annual interest, amounted 
to ;^i,3io,492 a year, which, observe, was a greater 
sum than the whole of the taxes had yearly amounted to 
in the reign of the Catholic James II. 1 So that here 
were taxes laid on for ever, mind that ; here were, on 
account of this grand no -popery affair — merely on ac- 
count of this " glorious revolution," which was expressly 
made for the purpose of getting rid of a Catholic king; 
here were additional taxes laid on for ever to a greater 
amount than the whole of the taxes raised by that Catholic 
king! Thus does the justice of God work! The treat- 
ment of the Catholics at this time was truly horrible ; 
the main body of the EngHsh people either approved of 
this treatment, or winked at it ; this debt scheme was in- 
vented by a Protestant bishop for the purpose of utterly 
extirpating the Catholic reHgion, and that religion still 
lives in the kingdom, nay, there are in the kingdom a 
greater number of Catholics than there are persons of any 
one other rehgion ; while the scheme, the crafty, the cun- 



I 



343 

nmg, the deep scheme, has from its ominous birth been 
breeding swarms of Jews, Quakers, usurers of every de- 
scription, feeding and fattening on the vitals of the country, 
till at last it has produced what the world never saw before, 
— starvation in the midst of abundance ! Yea, verily, this 
is the picture we now exhibit to the world : the Law- Church 
parsons putting up in all the churches thanksgiving for a 
plenteous harvest, and the main mass of the labouring 
people fed^and clad worse than the felons in the gaols ! 

412. However, we must not anticipate. We shall 
further on see something of the probable ultimate effects 
of this dreadful scheme. At present we have to see how 
it, together with the '* glorious revolution " out of which it 
arose, led to and produced the American revolution, or 
"Reformation" the fourth, by which two things were 
accomplished ; first, the lopping off of a large and valu- 
able part of the dominions of England ; secondly, the 
creating of a new mercantile and naval power, capable of 
disputing with her that dominion of the sea which has for 
so many ages been her chief glory, and without possessing 
which she must become a second-rate power in Europe. 
These were the things which were accomplished by the 
American Revolution, and therefore let us now see what 
it was that produced that revolution, or rather, let us see 
how it grew directly out of the "glorious revolution " and 
its " no-popery " wars and debts. 

413. Burnet's contrivance did very well for present use: 
it made the nation deaf to the voice of all those who fore- 
boded mischief from it, it made all those who were 
interested in the funds advocates for taxation ; the deep 
scheme set the rich to live upon the poor, and made the 
former have no feeling for those who bore the burden of 
the taxes ; in short, it divided the nation into two classes, 
the tax-payers and the tax-eaters, and these latter had the 
government at their back. The great protection of the 
people of England always had been, that they could not 



344 

be taxed without their own consent. This was always in 
Catholic times the great principle of the English govern- 
ment, and it is expressly and most explicitly asserted in 
Magna Charta, which was the work of a Catholic arch- 
bishop of Canterbury more than of anybody else. But 
how was it to be expected that this grand principle would 
be maintained, when a large part of the rich people them- 
selves lived upon the taxes; when a man's next-door 
neighbour received the taxes paid by that m^n ; when, 
in short, the community was completely divided, one part 
having a powerful interest in upholding that which was 
oppressive and ruinous to the other part ? 

414. Taxes, of course, went on increasing, and the debt 
went on in the same way. The Protestant interest 
demanded more wars, and brought on a couple of civil 
wars. Taxation marched on with dreadful strides. The 
people did not like it. At the ** glorious revolution " it 
had been settled and enacted that there should be a new 
Parliament called every three years at least, and this had 
been held forth as one of the great gains of the " glorious 
revolution." Another " great gain " was that no pensioner 
and no placeman were to sit in the House of Commons. 
These things were enacted, they were laws of the land, 
they were held forth to the people as great things gained 
by " Glorious." This last act was soon repealed, and 
placemen and pensioners have sat in the House of Com- 
mons ever since ! But the other act, the act securing the 
people a fresh choice every three years at least, that was a 
vital law. That law was in the new state of things, a 
state of taxes and debts, a state of things which demanded 
new taxes almost every year ; in such a state of things 
frequent and new Parliaments, new choosings at short 
intervals, were absolutely necessary to give the people a 
chance, even so much as a chance of avoiding oppressive 
taxation, and oppression, indeed, of every sort. It was, in 
short, the only means of protection that was left to the 
people. 



345 

415* Yet to uphold the new system it was necessary to 
demolish even this barrier of liberty and property ; and in 
the year 171 5, being the first year of the reign of George 
I., chap, xxxviii., this law, this vital law, this solemn 
compact between the Protestant dynasty and the people, 
was repealed and for ever abolished, and the three years 
were changed for seven, and that too, observe, by the very 
men whom the people had chosen to sit only for three 
years ! Yes, men chosen by the people to sit for three 
years enacted that they would sit for seven ; that 
they themselves would sit for seven ; and that those 
who had chosen them, together with their descendants 
for ever, should have no choice at all unless they voted 
for men who might at the king's pleasure sit for seven 
years ! 

416. It is useless for us to feel indignation and rage. 
They can do us no good. We shall do well to keep our- 
selves cool. But we ought to bear in mind that this thing, 
which has scourged us- so famously, was not done by 
Catholics, that they had no hand in it ; nay, that it was 
not only done under the new Protestant dynasty, but that 
this thing also, this thing the like of which the world never 
had and never has heard of, that this thing also was done 
from hostility to the religion of our fathers ! Good God ! 
What has this nation not suffered, and what has it not yet 
to suffer for this hostility ? There is hardly one great 
calamity or disgrace that has befallen England during the 
last three hundred years which we do not clearly trace to 
this fatal source. 

417. But this Septennial Bill, this measure which is 
perfectly matchless in its nature, and which has led to such 
dreadful effects;— this is a thing which we must have in its 
original black and white, and we must have every word of 
it too, for here we have a complete '* no-popery " law, and 
of this law we are tasting the effects to the present hour, 
and we shall taste them for a long while yet to come. 



346 

The following are the words, all the words, of this memor- 
able Act : — 

418. "Whereas in and by an Act of Parliament made 
in the sixth year of the reign of their late Majesties King 
WilHam and Queen Mary (of ever blessed memory) in- 
titulated an Act for the frequent meeting and calling of 
Parliaments : It was among other things enacted that 
from thenceforth no Parliament whatsoever that should at 
any time thereafter be called, assembled or held, should 
have any continuance longer than for three years only 
at the farthest, to be accounted from the day on which 
by the writ of summons the said Parliament should be 
appointed to meet : And whereas it has been found by 
experience that the said clause hath proved very grievous 
and burthensome, by occasioning much greater and more 
continued expenses in order to elections of members to 
serve in Parliament, and more violent and lasting heats 
and animosities among the subjects of this realm than 
were ever known before the said clause was enacted, and 
the said provision, if it should continue, may probably at 
this juncture, when a restless and popish faction are 
designing and endeavouring to renew the rebellion within 
this kingdom and an invasion from abroad, be destructive 
to the peace and security of the government." "Be it 
enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and 
with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and 
Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, and 
by the authority of the same, that this present Parliament, 
and all Parliaments that shall at any time hereafter be 
called, assembled or held, shall and may respectively have 
continuance for seven years and no longer, to be ac- 
counted from the day on which by the writ of summons 
this present Parliament hath been or any future Parlia- 
ment shall be appointed to meet, unless this present or 
any such Parliament hereafter to be summoned, shall be 
sooner dissolved by his Majesty, his heirs or successors," 



347 

419- So here it is again ! The " restless popish fac- 
tion " was at work ! So that the rights, the most precious 
rights of the whole of the people, were to be taken away 
merely on account of the designs and wishes of a " popish 
faction ! " What harm could a mere " faction " do at an 
election ? The truth is these pretences were false : the 
people, the great body of the people, smarting under the 
lash of enormous taxation, became disaffected towards the 
new order of things ; they were strongly disposed to revert 
to their former state ; it was suspected, and indeed pretty 
well known, that they would at the next election have 
chosen almost everywhere members having the same 
sentiments, and therefore it was resolved that they should 
not have the power of doing it. However, the deed was 
done ; we have felt the effects of it from that day to this, 
and we have now to remember that even this terrible 
curtailment of English liberty we owe to the hostility to 
the religion of our fathers, that religion during the 
dominance of which there was always a new House of 
Commons every time the Parliament was assembled ; that 
religion, along with which were bound up the people's 
civil and political rights ; that religion, the followers of 
which, while it was predominant, never heard of Parlia- 
ments for seven years or for three years, or even for one 
year, but who, as often as they saw a Parliament called, 
saw a Commons' House chosen for that one session and 
for no more. 

420. After the passing of the Septennial Act the people 
would, of course, lose nearly all the control that they had 
ever had with regard to the laying on of taxes and to the 
expending of the public money. Accordingly taxes went 
on increasing prodigiously. The excise system, which 
had had a little beginning in former Protestant reigns, 
and the very name of which had never been heard of in 
Catholic times, now assumed somewhat its present form, 
and the " castles " of Englishmen became thenceforth 



348 

things to be visited by excisemen. Things went on in 
this way until the reign of George III., when, by 
means of *' no-popery " wars -and other measures for " pre- 
serving the Protestant religion as by law established," the 
debt from ;^i, 500,000 had swelled up to ;^i46,682,844. 
The yearly interest of it had swelled up to ;^4,840,82i, 
which was about four times as much as the whole annual 
amount of the taxes in the reign of the popish James II. ! 
And the whole of the yearly taxes had swelled up to 
;f8,744,682. That is to say, about eight times as much as 
James had raised yearly on this same " no-popery " people ! 

421. Now, though men will do much in the way of talk 
against " popery," or against many other things, they are 
less zealous and active when it comes to money. The 
nation most sensibly felt the weight of these burdens, and 
the burdens received no alleviation from the circumstance 
of their being most righteously merited. The people 
looked back with aching hearts to former happy days, and 
the nobility and gentry began to perceive with shame and 
fear that already their estates were beginning to pass 
quietly from them (as Swift had told them they would) 
into the hands of the Jews, Quakers, and other money- 
changers created by the " no-popery " war, and by the 
scheme of the Scotchman, Burnet. But it was now too 
late to look back ; and yet to look forward to this certain 
and not very slow ruin was dreadful, and especially to 
men of ancient family and by no means destitute of pride. 
Fain would they, even at that time, have applied a sponge 
to the score brought against them by Burnet's tribes. 
But this desire was effectually counteracted by the same 
motive which led to the creation of the debt, — the necessity 
of embarking, and of keeping embarked, great masses of 
the money owners in the same boat with the government. 

422. In this dilemma, namely, the danger of touching 
the interest of the debt and the danger of continuing to 
pay that interest, a new scheme was resorted to, which it 



349 

was hoped would obviate both these dangers. It was to 
tax the American colonies, and to throw a part first, and 
perhaps the whole in the end, of the "no-popery" debt 
upon their shoulders ! Now, then, came '* Reformation " the 
fourth, having for cause the measures necessary to effect 
the " glorious revolution," taking the principles and the 
manner of that revolution as its example in these re- 
spects, beginning with a " convention " assembled without 
authority of King, Parliament or people, proceeding with 
charges against the king, with making it high treason to 
adhere to him, and ending with setting aside his authority 
and extinguishing his rights and those of his family for 
ever ! Aye, but besides all this, bringing the first dawn of 
relief to the long-suffering Catholics of England, Scotland 
and Ireland ! What it was that these our countrymen 
had to suffer for the crime of adhering to the religion of 
their and our fathers I shall leave, to state further on ; but 
I now proceed to show how this " Reformation " the fourth 
commenced and proceeded. 

423. The Septennial gentlemen proceeded at first very 
slowly in their attempts to shift the pressure of the debt 
from their own shoulders to that of the Americans. They 
sent out tea to pay a tax ; they imposed a stamp duty on 
certain things in the colonies ; but they had a clever, a 
sharp-sighted and a most cool and resolute and brave 
people to deal with. The Americans had seen debts, and 
funds and taxation, and abject submission creep by slow 
degrees over the people of England, and they resolved to 
resist at once the complicated curse. The money-people 
there were not, like those in England, the owners of stock 
and funds. They were not, as the money-people of 
England were, embarked in the same boat with the 
government; if they had there would have been more hesi- 
tation on the subject of resistance ; if they had been en- 
tangled in Burnet's artful web, the Americans might at 
this day have been hardly known in the world, might have 



350 

been a parcel of bands of poor devils doomed to toil for 
naughty and insolent masters. Happily for them, the 
Scotch bishop's deadly trammels had not reached them, 
and therefore they at once resolved not to submit to the 
Septennial commands. 

424. It is curious enough that they should, as the 
'* glorious " people had done, call themselves Whigs ! 
But the Septennial people were Whigs too, so that there 
were now Whigs resisting Whigs. A Whig means, in 
England, one who approves of the setting of James and 
his heirs aside. A Whig means, in America, one who 
approves of the setting of George and his heirs aside. 
The English Whigs called a convention, so did those of 
'America. The English Whigs published a declaration, 
containing as we have seen in paragraph 380, charges 
against James ; so did those of America against George. 
The charges against James were twelve in number. This 
is a favourite number with Whigs, for the American 
Whigs had twelve charges against George. We have 
seen in paragraph 380 what Protestants accused a Popish 
king of, and it is but fair for us to see what Protestants, 
and Catholics too, accused a Protestant king of. Black- 
stone, in justifying the " glorious " affair, took good care 
to say that the like was never to take place again, and the 
Septennial gentlemen declared, and I think enacted, that 
the king in future (being, of course, a Protestant) could 
do no wrong. Now the Americans seemed to think it 
hard that they should thus be positively forbidden to do 
what was so *' glorious " in Englishmen. Blackstone had 
told them that to justify another revolution all the same 
circumstances must exist ; not a part of them, but the whole 
of them. The king must not only endeavour to subvert 
the laws, he must not only commit acts of tyranny, but 
he must be a Catholic, and must have a design to over- 
throw the Protestant religion, and he must, into the bar- 
gain, have abdicated his authority by going out of the 



k 



351 

kingdom. So that, according to this lawyer, there never 
could by any possibility be a "glorious" revolution again, 
seeing that two essential circumstances must in any future 
case be wanting, as no Catholic was ever to be king again, 
and as no king was ever to do wrorjg any more. 

425. But, alas ! these American Whigs did not listen 
to Blackstone, though he had talked so piously about the 
" dark ages of monkish ignorance and superstition." They 
thought, nay they said, that a Protestant king might do 
wrong and had done wrong. They thought, or at least 
they said, that a king might abdicate his authority, not 
only without going out of the country, but also without 
ever having been in it ! In short, they drew up, a la 
*' glorious," charges against their Protestant king, his late 
Majesty ; and as the charges against James II. are found 
in an Act of Parliament, so the charges against George 
III. are found in an Act of Congress, passed on the 
memorable 4th of July, 1776. These charges were as 
follows : — 

426. The history of the present King of Great Britain 
is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having 
in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny 
over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted 
to a candid world. 

" I. He has refused to pass laws for the accommoda- 
tion of large districts of people, unless those people 
would relinquish the right of representation in the 
legislature — a right inestimable to them, and for- 
midable to tyrants only. 

" II. He has called the legislative bodies at places 
unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the 
repository of their public records, for the sole 
purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his 
measures. 

" III. He has dissolved representative houses re- 
peatedly, for opposing with firmness his invasions 
on the rights of the people. 



352 

" IV. He has obstructed the administration of justice, 
by refusing his assent to laws for establishing 
judiciary powers. 

" V. He has made judges dependent on his will alone 
for the tenure of their offices and the amount and 
payment of their salaries. 

" VI. He has created a multitude of new offices, and 
sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people 
and eat their substance. 

*• Vn. He has kept among us, in times of peace, 
standing armies without the consent of our legisla- 
tures. 

" Vni. He has affected to render the military inde- 
pendent of, and superior to, civil power. 

*• IX. He has combined with others to subject us to a 
jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and un 
acknowledged by our laws ; giving his assent to 
their acts of pretended legislation. 

" X. He has imposed taxes on us without our consent 

" XI. He has deprived us in many cases of the 
benefits of trial by jury. 

" XII. He has abdicated government here, by de- 
claring us out of his protection and waging war 
against us. In every stage of these oppressions 
we have petitioned for redress in the most humble 
terms : our repeated petitions have been answered 
by repeated injury. A prince whose character is 
thus marked by every act which defines a tyrant is 
unfit to be the ruler of a free people." 

427. Now, justice to the memory of the late king de- 
mands that we expressly assert that here are some most 
monstrous exaggerations, and especially at the close ; but 
does not that same justice demand of us, then, to be 
cautious how we give full credit to the charges made 
against James II. ? However, the question with us at the 
present moment is, not whether the grounds of one of 



353 

these revolutions were better than those of the other, but 
whether the last revolution grew directly out of the former; 
and of the affirmative of this question no man v^ho has 
read this chapter can, I think, entertain a doubt. 

428. I should now proceed to show that the French 
Revolution, or " Reformation" the fifth, grew immediately 
out of the American Revolution, and then to sum up the 
consequences ; but I am at the end of my paper. 



354 



CHAPTER XV. 

429. We have now traced the ** Reformation," in its 
deeds, down from the beginning, in the reign of Henry 
VHI., to the American Revolution ; and all that remains 
is to follow it along through the French Revolution and 
unto the present day. This is what I propose to do in 
the present chapter. In the next chapter I shall bring 
under one view my proofs of this proposition, namely, that 
before the event called the ** Reformation," England was 
more powerful and more wealthy, and that the people were 
more free, more moral, better fed, and better clad, than at 
any time since that event. 

430. The American Revolution, which, as we have seen, 
grew directly out of those measures which had been adopted 
in England to crush the Catholics and to extinguish their 
religion for ever, did, at its very outset, produce good to 
those same Catholics by inducing the English government 
to soften, for the sake of its own safety, that penal code 
by which they had so long been scourged. But now, 
before we speak of the immediate cause and of the manner 
and degree of this softening, we must have a sketch of 
this horrible code, — this monster in legislation, surpassing 
in violation of the dictates of humanity and justice any- 
thing else that the world has ever seen existing under the 
name of law. 

431. We have seen how cruelly the Catholics were 
treated under Queen Elizabeth and James I. ; we have 
seen how they were fined, mulcted, robbed, pillaged, and 
punished in body ; but though the penal code against 



355 

them was then such as to make every just man shudder 
with horror, we think it then gentleness when we look at 
its subsequent ferocity. We have seen how Catholics 
were fined, harassed, hunted, robbed, pillaged, in the reign 
of Elizabeth. We have seen the same in the reign of 
her immediate successor, with this addition, that English- 
men were then handed over to be pillaged by Scotchmen. 
We have seen that Charles I., for whom they afterwards 
fought against Cromwell, treated them as cruelly as the 
two former. We have seen Charles 11. most unmercifully 
abandon them to the persecutions of the Church by law 
established ; and during this reign we have seen that the 
Protestants had the baseness, and the king the meanness, 
to suffer the lying inscription to be put on the Monument 
on Fish Street Hill, in the City of London, though Lord 
Clarendon (whose name the Law-Church holds in so much 
honour), in that work which the University of Oxford 
publishes at the *' Clarendon Press," expressly says 
(p. 348, continuation) that a committee of the House of 
Commons, " who were very diligent and solicitous to 
make the discovery, never were able to find any probable 
evidence that there was any other cause of that woeful 
fire than the displeasure of Almighty God." What 
infamy then to charge the Catholics with it ; what an 
infamy to put the lying inscription on the pillar ; what an 
act of justice in James H. to efface it ; what a shame to 
William to suffer it to be restored ; and what is it to us, 
then, who now suffer it to remain without petitioning for 
its erasure ! 

432. But it was after James H. was set aside that the 
penal code grew really horrible. And here it is of the 
greatest consequence to the cause of truth that we trace 
this code to its real authors, namely, the clergy of the 
EstabUshed Church. This is evident enough throughout 
the whole of this Church's history ; but until the reign of 
James H. the sovereign was of the Church religion, so 



556 

that the persecutions appeared to come from him or her. 
But now, when the king was for softening the penal code, 
when the king was for toleration, now the world saw who 
were the real persecutors ; and this is a matter to be 
fully explained and understood before we come to a more 
minute account of the code and to the causes which 
finally led to its, in great part, abolition. 

433. James II. wished to put an end to the penal code, 
he wished for general toleration ; he issued a proclamation 
suspending all penal laws relating to religion, and granting 
a general liberty of conscience to all his subjects. This 
was his offence. For thir, he and his family were set 
aside for ever ! No man can deny this. The clergy of 
the Church set themselves against him. Six of the bishops 
presented to him an insolent petition against the exercise 
of this his prerogative, enjoyed and exercised by all his 
predecessors. They led the way in that opposition which 
produced the " glorious revolution," and they were the 
most active and most bitter of all the foes of that unfor- 
tunate king, whose only real offence was his wishing to 
give liberty of conscience to all his subjects, and by 
showing respect to whose mortal remains (displaced by 
the French Revolutionists) our present king has done 
himself very great honour. 

434. Now we are going to see a sketch of this terrible 
code. It must be a mere sketch ; two hundred chapters 
like this would not contain the whole of it. It went on 
increasing in bulk and in cruelty from the coronation of 
Elizabeth till nearly twenty years after that of George 
III., till events came, as we shall see, and broke it up. It 
consisted, at last, of more than a hundred acts of Parlia- 
ment, all made for the express purpose of punishing men 
because, and only because, they continued faithfully to 
adhere to the religion in which our as well as their fathers 
had lived and died during a period of nine hundred years ! 
The code differed, in some respects, in its application with 
regard to England and Ireland respectively. 



357 

435- I" England this code (i) stripped the peers of 
their hereditary right to sit in ParUament ; (2) it stripped 
gentlemen of their right to be chosen members of the 
Commons' House ; (3) it took from all the right to vote 
at elections, and though Magna Charta says that no man 
shall be taxed without his own consent, it double-taxed 
every man who refused to abjure his religion and thus 
become an apostate ; (4) it shut them out from all offices 
of power and trust, even the most insignificant ; (5) it took 
from them the right of presenting to livings in the Church, 
though that right was given to Quakers and to Jews ; (6) 
it fined then at the rate of £10 a month for keeping away 
from that Church to go to which they deemed apostacy ; 
(7) it disabled them from keeping arms in their houses 
for their defence, from maintaining suits at law, from being 
guardians or executors, from practising in law or physic, 
from travelling five miles from their houses, and all these 
under heavy penalties in case of disobedience; (8) if a 
married woman kept a^yay from church, she forfeited two- 
thirds of her dower, she could not be executrix to her 
husband, and might, during her husband's lifetime, be im- 
prisoned, unless ransomed by him at £10 a month ; (9) it 
enabled any four justices of the peace, in case a man had 
been convicted of not going to church, to call him before 
them, to compel him to abjure his religion, or, if he refused, 
to sentence him to banishment for life (without judge or 
jury), and if he returned he was to suffer death ; (10) it 
enabled any two justices of the peace to call before them, 
without any information, any man that they chose above 
sixteen years of age, and if such man refused to abjure the 
Catholic religion and continued in his refusal for six months, 
he was rendered incapable of possessing land, and any land 
the possession of which might belong to him came into 
possession of the next Protestant heir, who was not 
obliged to account for any profits ; (11) it made such man 
incapable of purchasing lands, and all contracts made by 



35* 

him or for him were null and void ; (12) it imposed a fine 
of ;^io a month for employing a Catholic schoolmaster in a 
private family, and £1 a day on the schoolmaster so em- 
ployed; (13) it imposed ;^ioo fine for sending a child to a 
Catholic foreign school, and the child so sent was disabled 
from ever inheriting, purchasing, or enjoying lands or 
profits, goods, debts, legacies, or sums of money; (14) it 
punished the saying of mass by a fine of ;fi20, and the 
hearing of mass by a fine of £^0 ; (15) any Catholic priest 
who returned from beyond the seas and who did not abjure 
his religion in three days afterwards, and also any person 
who returned to the Catholic faith, or procured another to 
return to it, this merciless, this sanguinary code punished 
with hanging, ripping out of bowels, and quartering. 

436. In Ireland the code was still more ferocious, more 
hideously bloody, for in the first place all the cruelties of 
the English code had, as the work of a few hours, a few 
strokes of the pen, in one single act been inflicted on 
unhappy Ireland; and then, in addition, the Irish code 
contained, amongst many other violations of all the laws 
of justice and humanity, the following twenty most savage 
punishments : — (i) A Catholic schoolmaster, private or 
public, or even usher to a Protestant, was punished with 
imprisonment, banishment, and finally as a felon. (2) 
The Catholic clergy were not allowed to be in the country 
without being registered and kept as a sort of prisoners at 
large, and rewards were given (out of the revenue raised 
in part on the Catholics) for discovering them, £^0 for 
an archbishop or bishop, ;^2o for a priest, and ;^io for a 
schoolmaster or usher. (3) Any two justices of the peace 
might call before them any Catholic, order him to declare 
on oath where and when he heard mass, who were present, 
and the name and residence of any priest or schoolmaster 
that he might know of; and if he refused to obey this 
inhuman inquisition, they had power to condemn him 
(without judge or jury) to a year's imprisonment in a 



359 

felon's gaol or to pay £no. (4) No Catholic could pur- 
chase any manors, nor even hold under a lease for more 
than thirty-one years. (5) Any Protestant, if he suspected 
any one of holding property in trust for a Catholic, or of 
being concerned in any sale, lease, mortgage, or other 
contract for a Catholic, any Protestant thus suspecting 
might file a bill against the suspected trustee and take 
the estate or property from him. (6) Any Protestant 
seeing a Catholic tenant of a farm, the produce of which 
farm exceeded the amount of the rent by more than one- 
third, might dispossess the Catholic and enter on the lease 
in his stead. (7) Any Protestant seeing a Catholic with 
a horse worth more than five pounds might take the horse 
away from him upon tendering him five pounds. (8) In 
order to prevent the smallest chance of justice in these and 
similar cases, none but known Protestants were to be 
jurymen in the trial of any such cases. (9) Horses of 
Catholics might be seized for the use of the militia, 
and besides this Catholics were compelled to pay double 
towards the militia. (10) Merchants whose ships and 
goods might be taken by privateers during a war with a 
Catholic prince were to be compensated for their losses 
by a levy on the goods and lands of Catholics only, 
though, mind. Catholics were at the same time impressed 
and compelled to shed their blood in the war against that 
same Catholic prince. (11) Property of a Protestant 
whose heirs at law were Catholics was to go to the 
nearest Protestant relation, just the same as if the 
Catholic heirs had been dead, though the property might 
be entailed on them. (12) If there were no Protestant 
heir, then, in order to break up all Catholic families, the 
entail and all heirship were set aside, and the property 
was divided, share and share alike, amongst all the 
Catholic heirs. (13) If a Protestant had an estate in 
Ireland he was forbidden to marry a Catholic in or out 
of Ireland. (14) All marriages between Protestants and 



36o 

Catholics were annulled, though many children might 
have proceeded from them. (15) Every priest who cele- 
brated a marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant, 
or between two Protestants, was condemned to be hanged. 
(16) A Catholic father could not be guardian to, or have 
the custody of, his own child, if the child, however young, 
pretended to be a Protestant ; but the child was taken from 
its own father and put into the custody of a Protestant 
relation. (17) If any child of a Catholic became a Pro- 
testant, the parent was to be instantly summoned and to 
be made to declare upon oath the full value of his or her 
property of all sorts, and then the Chancery was to make 
such distribution of the property as it thought fit. (18) 
*' Wives, be obedient unto your own husbands," says the 
great Apostle. " Wives, be disobedient to them," said 
this horrid code ; for if the wife of a Catholic chose to turn 
Protestant it set aside the will of the husband and made 
her a participator in all his possessions in spite of him, 
however immoral, however bad a wife or bad a mother 
she might have been. (19) " Honour thy father and thy 
mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the 4 
Lord thy God giveth thee." ** Dishonour them," said ^ 
this savage code ; for if any one of the sons of a Catholic 
father became a Protestant, this son was to possess all 
the father had, and the father could not sell, could not 
mortgage, could not leave legacies or portions out of his 
estate by whatever title he might hold it, even though it 
might have been the fruit of his own toil. (20) Lastly 
(of this score, but this is only a part) ** the Church, as by 
law established " was, in her great indulgence, pleased net 
only to open her doors, but to award (out of the taxes) 
thirty pounds a year for life to any Catholic priest who 
would abjure his religion and declare his belief in hers ! 

437. Englishmen ! is there a man, a single man, bearing 
that name, whose blood will not chill at this recital, who, 
when he reflects that these barbarities were inflicted on 



36i 

men because and only because they adhered with fidelity 
to the faith of their and our fathers, to the faith of Alfred, 
the founder of our nation, to the faith of the authors of 
Magna Charta and of all those venerable institutions of 
which we so justly boast, who, when he thus reflects, and 
when he, being as I am, a Protestant of the Church of 
England, further reflects that all these cruelties were in- 
flicted for the avowed purpose of giving and preserving 
predominance to that Church, will not with me not only 
feel deep sorrow and shame for the past, but heartily join 
me in best endeavours to cause justice to be done to the 
sufferers for the time to come ? 

438. As to the injustice, as to the barbarity, as to the 
flagrant immorality of the above code, they call for no 
comment, being condemned by the spontaneous voice of 
nature herself; but in this shocking assemblage there are 
two things which impel us to ask whether the love of truth, 
whether a desire to eradicate religious error, could have 
formed any part, however small, of the motives of these 
punishers ? These two things are, the reward offered to 
Catholic priests to induce them to come over to our 
♦Church, and the terrible means made use of to prevent 
the inter-marriage of Catholics and Protestants. Could 
these measures ever have suggested themselves to the 
minds of men who sincerely believed that the Church 
religion was supported by arguments more cogent than 
those by which the Catholic religion was supported ? The 
Law-Church had all the powers, all the honours, all the 
emoluments, all the naturally worldly allurements. These 
she continually held out to all who were disposed to the 
clerical order. And if, in addition to all these, she had 
felt strong in argument, would she ha- ^e found it necessary 
to offer, in direct and barefaced words, a specific sum of 
money to any one who would join her, and that, too, 
when the pensioned convert must, as she well knew, break 
his solemn vow in order to be entitled to the pay ? And 



3^2 

as to inter-marriages, why not suffer them, why punish 
them so severely, why annul them if the Law- Church were 
sure that the arguments in her favour were the most cogent 
and convincing. Who has so much power over the mind 
of woman as her husband ? Who over man as his wife ? 
Would one persuade the other to a change of religion ? 
Very likely. One would convert the other in nineteen 
cases out of twenty. That passion which had subdued 
religious prejudices would, in almost every case, make both 
the parties of the same religion. But what had the Law- 
Church to object to this, if she were sure that hers was 
the true faith ; if she were sure that the arguments for her 
were more clear than those for her opponent ; if she were 
sure that every one who really loved another, who was 
beloved by that other, and who belonged to her commu- 
nion, would easily persuade that other to join in that com- 
munion ? What, in short, had she, if quite sure of all this, 
to fear from inter-marriages ? And if not quite sure of all 
this, what, I ask you, sensible and just EngHshmen, what 
had she to plead in justification of the inhuman penal code ? 
439. Talk of the *' fires in Smithfield " ! Fires, indeed, 
which had no justification, and which all Catholics severely 
condemn : but what, good God ! was the death of about 
two hundred and seventy-seven persons, however cruel and 
unmerited that death, to the torments above described, 
inflicted for more than two hundred years on millions 
upon millions of people, to say nothing about the thousands 
upon thousands of Catholics who were, during that period, 
racked to death, killed in prison, hanged, bowelled, and 
quartered! Besides, let it never be forgotten that the 
punishments in Smithfield were for the purpose of reclaim- 
ing, for the purpose of making examples of a few who set 
at nought the religion of their fathers and that in which 
they themselves had been born. And if these punishments 
were unjust and cruel, as all men agree that they were, 
what shall we say of, how shall we express sufficient abhor- 



363 

rence of, the above penal code, which was for the punish- 
ment, not of a few, but of millions of people; or the 
punishment, not of those who had apostatized from the 
religion of their fathers, but of those who to their utter 
worldly ruin adhered to that religion ? If we find no 
justification — and none, we all say, there was — for the pun- 
ishments of Mary's reign, inflicted, as all men know they 
were, on very few persons, and those persons not only 
apostates from the faith of their fathers but also for the 
most part either notorious traitors or felons, and at the 
very least conspirators against, or most audacious insulters 
of, the royal authority and the person of the queen ; if we 
find no justification, and we all agree that there was none, 
for these punishments inflicted, as all men know they 
were, during a few months of furious and unreflecting zeal, 
just after the quelling of a dangerous rebellion which had 
clearly proved that apostate and conspirator were one and 
the same, and had led to the hasty conclusion that the 
apostacy must be extirpated, or that it would destroy the 
throne; if we find, even under such circumstances, no 
justification for these punishments, where are we to look 
for, not a justification, but for a ground of qualification of 
our abhorrence of the above-mentioned barbarities of more 
than two hundred years, inflicted on millions upon millions 
of people ; barbarities premeditated in the absence of all 
provocation; contrived and adopted in all the calmness of 
legislative deliberation ; executed in cold blood, and per- 
severed in for ages, in defiance of the admonitions of con- 
science; barbarities inflicted, not on apostates, but on 
those who refused to apostatize ; not on felons, conspirators, 
and rebels, but on innocent persons, on those who had 
under all and every circumstance, even while feeling the 
cruel lash of persecution, been as faithful to their king as 
to their God ! — and as if we were never to come to the end 
of the atrocity, all this done, too, with regard to Ireland, 
in flagrant breach of a solemn treaty with the English 
Icing 1 



3^4 

440- And is this the "tolerant, the mild, the meek 
Church as by law established " ? Have we here the 
proofs of Protestant faith and good works ? Was it thus 
that St. Austin and St. Patrick introduced, and that St. 
Swithun, and Alfred, and William of Wykham inculcated 
the religion of Christ ? Was it out of works like these that 
the cathedrals, and the palaces, and the universities, and 
the laws, and the courts of justice arose ? What ? punish 
men for retaining the faith of their fathers ; inflict all sorts 
of insults and cruelties on them for not having become 
apostates ; put them, because they were Catholics, out of 
the protection of all the laws that their and our Catholic 
ancestors had framed for the security of their children ; 
call their religion "idolatrous and damnable," treat them 
as obstinate idolaters, while your Church Calendar contains 
none but saints of that very religion ; boast of your vener- 
able institutions, all of Catholic origin, while you insult, 
pillage, scourge, hunt from the face of the earth, the true 
and faithful adherents to the faith of the authors of those 
institutions ? " Aye," the persecutors seem to have 
answered, "and hunt them we will." But why, then, if 
religion be your motive, if your barbarities arise from a 
desire to convert men from error, why be so lenient to 
Quakers and Jews; why not only not punish, but suffer 
them even to appoint parsons to your churches ? Ah ! 
my friends, the Law-Church had taken no tithes and 
lands, and others had taken no abbeys and the like from 
Quakers and Jews ! Here was the real foundation of the 
whole of that insatiable rancour which went on from 1558 
to 1778, producing, to millions of innocent people, torment 
added to torment, and which, at the end of that long 
period, seemed to have resolved to be satisfied with 
nothing short of the total extermination of its victims. 

441. But now, all of a sudden, in 1778, the face of things 
began to change ; the Church as by law established was 
^11 at once thought capable of existing in safety with a 



305 

great relaxation of the penal code I And without even 
asking it, the Catholics found the code suddenly softened 
by divers Acts of Parliament in both countries, and 
especially in Ireland ! This humanity and generosity will 
surprise us ; we shall wonder whence it came ; we shall be 
ready to believe the souls of the parties to have been 
softened by a sort of miracle, until we look back to para- 
graphs 425 and 426. There we see the real cause of this 
surprising humanity and generosity; there we see the 
Americans unfurling the standard of independence, and 
having been backed by France, pushing on towards success, 
and thereby setting an example to every oppressed people 
in every part of the world, unhappy, trodden-down Ireland 
not excepted. There was, too, before the end of the war, 
danger of invasion on the part of France, who was soon 
joined in the war by Spain and Holland, so that before 
the close of the contest the Catholics had obtained leave to 
breathe the air of their native country in safety ; and 
though, as an Englishman, I deeply lament that this cost 
England her right arm, I most cordially rejoice in contem- 
plating the event. Thus was fear gratified in a moment, 
at the very first demand, with a surrender of that which 
had for ages been refused to the incessant pleadings of 
justice and humanity ; and thus the American revolution, 
which, as we have seen, grew immediately out of the " no- 
popery " or " glorious " revolution in England, which latter 
was, as we have clearly seen, made for the express purpose 
of extinguishing the Catholic religion for ever ; thus w^as 
this very event the cause of the beginning of a cessation of 
the horrible persecutions of those who had, with fidelity 
wholly without a parallel, adhered to that religion ! 

442. This great event was soon followed by another still 
greater, namely, the French Revolution, or "Reformation" 
the fifth. Humiliation greater than the English govern- 
ment had to endure in the above event it is difficult to 
conceive ; but the French Revolution taught the world what 



366 

"Reformations" can do when pushed to their full and 
natural extent. In England the " Reformation '* contented 
itself with plundering the convents and the poor of their all, 
and the secular clergy in part. But in France they took 
the whole, though we ought to mark well this difference, 
that in France they applied this whole to the use of the 
public ; a bad use, perhaps, but to public use they appHed 
the whole of the plunder, while in England the plunder 
was scrambled for and remained divided amongst indi- 
viduals ! 

443. Well, but here was a great triumph for the clergy 
of the " Church as by law established " ! They, above all 
men, must have hailed with delight the deeds of the French 
'* Reformation" ! No : but on the contrary were amongst 
the foremost in calling for war to put down that " Re- 
formation " ! What ? Not like this " Reformation " ? Why, 
here were convents broken up and monks and nuns dis- 
persed ; here were abbey lands confiscated ; here was the 
Catholic religion abolished ; here were Catholic priests 
hunted about and put to death in almost as savage a man- 
ner as those of England had been ; here were laws, seem- 
ingly translated from our own code, against saying or 
hearing mass, and against priests returning into the king- 
dom ; here was a complete annihilation (as far as legislative 
provisions could go) of that which our Church clergy called 
" idolatrous and damnable " ; here was a new religion 
"established bylaw"; and, that no feature might be de- 
fective in the likeness, here was a royal family set aside by 
law for ever by what they called a "glorious revolution 
and there would have been an abdicating king, but he waj 
by mere accident stopped in his flight, brought back and! 
put to death, not, however, without an example to plead 
in the deeds of the EngHsh double-distilled Protestant] 
" Reformation " people. 

444. What ! Can it be true, that our Church clergy did! 
not like this French " Reformation " ? and that they urge4 



3^7 

on war against the men who had sacked convents, killed 
priests, and abolished that which was " idolatrous and 
damnable " ? Can it be true that they who rose against 
King James because he wanted to give Catholics liberty of 
conscience, that they who upheld the horrid penal code 
in order to put down the Catholic religion in England and 
Ireland, — can it be true that they wanted war to put down 
the men who had put down that religion in France ! Aye, 
aye ! But these men had put down all tithes too ! Aye, 
and all bishoprics, and deaneries, and prebendaries, and all 
fat benefices and pluralities ! And if they were permitted 
to do this with impunity others might be tempted to do the 
same ! Well, but, gentlemen of the Law-Church, though 
they were wicked fellows for doing this, still this was better 
than to suffer to remain that which you always told us was 
" idolatrous and damnable." " Yes, yes ; but then these 
men- established by law atheism, and not Church of 
England Christianity." Now in the first place they saw 
about forty sorts of Protestant religion ; they knew that 
thirty-nine of them must be false ; they had seen our rulers 
make a Church by law, just such an one as they pleased ; 
they had seen them alter it by law ; and if there were no 
standard of faith, no generally acknowledged authority, 
if English law-makers were to change the sort of religion 
at their pleasure, why, pray, were not French law-makers 
to do the same ? If English law-makers could take the 
spiritual supremacy from the successor of St. Peter, and 
give it to Henry the-wife-killer, why might not the French 
give theirs to Lepeau ? Besides, as to the sort of religion, 
though atheism is bad enough, could it be worse than what 
you tell us is " idolatrous and damnable" ? It might cause 
people to be damned, but could it cause them to be more 
than damned ? Alas ! there remains only the abolition ol 
the tithes and of the fat clerical posts as a valid objection, 
on your part, against " Reformation" the fifth; and I beg 
the nation to remember that the war against it has left us 



368 

to pay for ever the interest of a debt, created by that war, 
of seven hundred milHons of pounds sterling, a war which 
we never should have seen if we had never seen that which 
is called a " Reformation." 

445. The French Revolution, though it caused numerous 
horrid deeds to be committed, produced, in its progress and 
in its end, a great triumph for the Catholics. It put the 
fidelity of the Catholic priests and the Protestant pastors to 
the test ; and while not one of the former was ever seen to 
save his life by giving up his faith, all the latter did it 
without hesitation. It showed, at last, the people of a 
great kingdom returning to the Catholic worship by choice, 
when they might have been, and may now be, Protestants 
without the loss of any one right, immunity, or advantage, 
civil or military. But the greatest good that it produced 
fell to the lot of ill-treated Ireland. The Revolutionists 
were powerful, they were daring; they, in 1793, cast their 
eyes on Ireland ; and now, for the second time, a softening 
of the penal code took place, making a change which no 
man living ever expected to see ! Those who had been 
considered as almost beneath dogs, were now made capable 
of being magistrates ; and now, amongst many other acts 
of generosity we saw established at the public expense a 
college for the education of Catholics exclusively, thus 
doing by law that which the law-givers had before made 
high treason ! Ah ! But there were the French with 
an army of four hundred thousand men, and there were 
the Irish people, who must have been something more or 
less than men if their breasts did not boil with resent- 
ment. Alas ! that it should be said of England that the 
Irish have never appealed with success but to her fears ! 

446. And shall this always be said ? Shall it ever be 
said again ? Shall we not now, by sweeping away for ever 
every vestige of this once horrible and still oppressive code, 
reconcile ourselves to our long ill-treated brethren and to 
our own consciences? The code is still a. penal code ; it is 



3^9 

still a just ground of complaint ; it has still disqualifications 
that are greatly injurious, and distinctions that are odious 
and insulting, (i) It still shuts Catholic peers out of those 
seats in the House of Lords which are their hereditary- 
right, and Catholic gentlemen out of the House of Com- 
mons. (2) Then, as if caprice were resolved not to be 
behindhand with injustice, this code, which allows Catholic 
freeholders in Ireland to vote at elections for members oi 
Parliament of the now " United Kingdom," refuses that 
right to all Catholics in England ! (3) It excludes Catholics 
from all corporations. (4) It excludes them from all 
offices under the government in England, but admits them 
to inferior offices in Ireland. (5) It takes from them the 
right of presenting to any ecclesiastical benefice, though 
Quakers and Jews are allowed to enjoy that right. (6) It 
prevents them from endowing any school or college for 
educating children in the Catholic religion ; and this, too, 
while there is now, by law established, a college for this 
very purpose supported out of the taxes ! Here is con- 
sistency, and here is, above all things, sincerity ! What ! 
maintain out of the taxes a college to teach exclusively 
that rehgion which you call " idolatrous and damnable " ? 
(7) This code still forbids Catholic priests to appear in 
their canonical habiliments, except in their chapels or in 
private houses ; and it forbids the Catholic rites to be per- 
formed in any building which has a steeple or bells ! What ! 
forbid the use of steeples and bells to that religion which 
created all the steeples and all the bells ; that built and en- 
dowed all the churches, all the magnificent cathedrals, and 
both the Universities ! And why this insulting, this galHng, 
prohibition ? Why so sedulous to keep the symbols of this 
worship out of the sight of the people ? Why, gentle Law- 
Church, if your features be so lovely as you say they are, 
and if those of your rival present, as you say they do, a 
mass of disgusting deformity ; why, if this be the case, are 
you, who are the most gentle, amiable, and beautiful Church 

24 



370 

that law ever created — why, I say, are you so anxious to 
keep your rival out of sight ? Nay, and out of hearing, 
too ! What ! gentle and all-persuasive and only true Law- 
Church, whose parsons and bishops are such able preachers, 
and mostly married men into the bargain, what are you 
afraid of from the steeples and bells if used by Catholics ! 
One would think that the more people went to witness the 
" idolatrous " exhibitions the better you would like it. 
Alas ! gentle and lovely Law-Church, there are not now in 
the kingdom many men so brutishly ignorant as not to see 
the real motives for this uncommonly decent prohibition. 
(8) It forbids a Catholic priest in Ireland to be guardian 
to any child. (9) It forbids Catholic laymen in Ireland 
to act in the capacity of guardian to the children, or child, 
of any Protestant. (10) It forbids every Catholic in Ireland 
to have arms in his house, unless he have a freehold of ten 
pounds a year, or ;f300 in personal property. (11) It dis- 
ables Irish Catholics from voting at vestries on questions 
relating to the repair of the church, though they are com- 
pelled to pay for those repairs. (12) Lastly, in Ireland 
this code still inflicts death, or, at least, a £500 penalty on 
the Catholic priest who celebrates a marriage between two 
Protestants, or between a Protestant and a Catholic. Some 
of the judges have decided that it is death ; others that it 
is the pecuniary penalty. Death or money, however, the 
public papers have recently announced to us that such a 
marriage has now been openly celebrated in Dublin be- 
tween the present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (who must 
be a Protestant) and a Catholic lady of the late rebellious 
American States ! So that, all put together, Dublin ex- 
hibits at this moment a tolerably curious scene : — A college 
established by law for the teaching of that religion which 
our Church regards as '* idolatrous and damnable," and 
to be guilty of teaching which was, only a few years ago, 
high treason ! A Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who must 
belong to our Church and who must have taken an oath 



37« 

protesting against the Catholic supremacy, taking to his 
arms a Catholic wife, who must adhere to that supremacy ! 
Then comes a Catholic priest, marrying this pair in the 
face of two unrepealed laws, one of which condemns him to 
death for the act, and the other of which condemns him to 
pay a fine of five hundred pounds ! And lastly comes, as 
the public prints tell us," a complimentary letter on the 
occasion to the bridegroom, on the part and in the hand- 
writing of the King ! 

447. Well, then, is this code, is any fragment of it, 
longer to continue ? Is it to continue now, when all idea 
of conversion to Protestantism is avowedly abandoned, 
and when it is notorious that the Catholic faith has, in 
spite of ages of persecution, done more than maintain its 
ground ? Are peers still to be cut off from their hereditary 
rights and honours ; are gentlemen to be shut out of the 
Commons' House ; are lawyers to be stopped in their way 
to the bench ; are freeholders and freemen to be deprived 
of their franchises ; are the whole to lie under a stigma, 
which it is not in human nature should fail to fill them 
with resentment ; and all this because they adhere to the 
religion of their and our fathers, and a religion, too, to 
educate youth in which, exclusively, there is now a college 
supported out of the taxes ? Is all this great body of men, 
forming one-third part of the whole of the people of this 
kingdom, containing men of all ranks, from the peer to the 
labourer, to continue to be thus insulted, thus injured, thus 
constantly irritated, constantly impelled to wish for distress, 
danger, defeat, and disgrace to their native country, as 
affording the only chance of their obtaining justice ? And 
are we, merely to gratify the Law-Church by upholding 
her predominance, still to support, in peace, a numerous 
and most extensive army ; still to be exposed, in war, to 
the danger of seeing concession come too late, and to all 
those consequences the nature and extent of which it 
makes one shudder to think of ? 



372 

448. Here, then, we are, at the end of three hundred 
years from the day when Henry VIII. began the work 
of *' Reformation " ; here we are, after passing through 
scenes of plunder and of blood such as the world never 
beheld before; here we are with these awful questions 
still before us ; and here we are, too, with forty sorts of 
Protestant religion, instead of the one fold in which our 
forefathers lived for nine hundred years; here we are, 
divided and split up into sects, each condemning all the 
rest to eternal flames ; here we are, a motley herd of 
Church people, Methodists, Calvinists, Quakers, and Jews, 
chopping and changing with every wind ; while the faith 
of St. Austin and St. Patrick still remains what it was 
when it inspired the heart and sanctified the throne of 
Alfred. 

449. Such, as far as religion is concerned, have been 
the effects of what is called the " Reformation " : what 
its effects have been in other respects, how it has en- 
feebled and impoverished the nation, how it has corrupted 
and debased the people, and how it has brought barracks, 
taxing-houses, poor-houses, mad-houses and gaols, to 
supply the place of convents, hospitals, guilds, and alms- 
houses, we shall see in the next chapter ; and then we 
shall have before us the whole of the consequences of this 
great, memorable and fatal event. 



373 



CHAPTER XVI. 

450. This chapter is to conclude my task, which task 
was to make good this assertion, — that the event called the 
** Reformation " had impoverished and degraded the main 
body of the people of England and Ireland. In para- 
graph 4 I told you that a fair and honest inquiry would 
teach us that the word " Reformation " had, in this 
case, been misapplied ; that there was a change, but a 
change greatly for the worse ; that the thing called the 
Reformation ** was engendered in lust, brought forth in 
hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, 
devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish 
blood ; and that as to its more remote consequences, 
they are, some of them, now before us in that misery, 
that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that ever- 
lasting wrangling and spite, which now stare us in the 
face and stun our ears at every turn, and which the 
* Reformation ' has given us in exchange for the ease and 
happiness and harmony and Christian charity enjoyed so 
abundantly, and for so many ages, by our Catholic fore- 
fathers." 

451. All this has been amply proved in the fifteen 
foregoing chapters, except that I have not yet shown in 
detail how our Catholic forefathers lived, what sort and 
what quantity of food and raiment they had, compared 
with those which we have. This I am now about to do. I 
have made good my charge of lust, hypocrisy, perfidy, 
plunder, devastation, and bloodshed ; the charge of misery, 
of beggary, of nakedness and of hunger, remains to be fully 
established. 



374 

452. But I choose to be better rather than worse than 
my word : I did not pledge myself to prove anything as to 
the population, wealth, power, and freedom of the nation ; 
but I will now show not only that the people were better 
off, better fed and clad, before the " Reformation " than 
they ever have been since, but that the nation was more 
populous, wealthy, powerful and free before than it ever 
has been since that event. Read modern romancers, 
called historians, every one of whom has written for place 
or pension ; read the statements about the superiority of 
the present over former times, about our prodigious 
increase in population, wealth, power, and, above all things, 
our superior freedom ; read the monstrous statements of 
Hume, who unblushingly asserts " that one good county 
of England is now capable of making a greater effort than 
the whole kingdom was in the reign of Henry V., when 
to maintain the garrison of the small town of Calais 
required more than a third of the ordinary revenues"; 
this is the way in which every Scotchman reasons.^ He 
^^Iways estimates the wealth of a nation by the money the 
government squeezes out of it. He forgets that ** a poor 
government makes a rich people." According to this 
criterion of Hume, America must now be a wretchedly 
poor country. This same Henry V. could conquer, really 
conquer, France, and that, too, without beggaring England 
by hiring a million of Prussians, Austrians, Cossacks, and 
all sorts of hirelings. But writers have, for ages, been so 
dependent on the government and the aristocracy, and the 
people have read and believed so much of what they have 
said, and especially in praise of the " Reformation " and 
its effects, that it is no wonder that they should think that 
in Catholic times England was a poor, beggarly spot, 
having a very few people on it, and that the " Reforma- 
tion " and the House of Brunswick and the Whigs have 



• History (Murray's reprint), i., 605. 






375 

^iven us all we possess of wealth, of power, of freedom, 
and have almost created us, or at least, if not actually 
begotten us, caused nine-tenths of us to be born. These 
are all monstrous lies, but they have succeeded for ages. 
Few men dared to attempt to refute them, and if anyone 
made the attempt he obtained few hearers, and ruin, in 
some shape or other, was pretty sure to be the reward of 
his virtuous efforts. Now, however, when we are smart- 
ing under the lash of calamity ; now, when everyone says 
that no state of things ever was so bad as this, now men 
may listen to the truth, and therefore I will lay it before 
them. 

453. Populousness is a thing not to be proved by posi- 
tive facts, because there are no records of the numbers of 
the people in former times, and because those which we 
have in our own day are notoriously false ; if they be not 
the English nation has added a third to its population 
during the last twenty years ! In short, our modern records 
I have, over and over again, proved to be false, particu- 
larly in my Register, No. 2 of volume 46. That England 
was more populous in Catholic times than it is now we 
must believe, when we know that in the three first Pro- 
testant reigns thousands of parish churches were pulled 
down, that parishes were united in more than two thousand 
instances, and when we know from the returns now before 
Parliament, that out of 11,761 parishes in England and 
Wales, there are upwards of a thousand which do not 
contain a hundred persons each, men, women and children. 
Then, again, the size of the churches. They were mani- 
festly built, in general, to hold three, four, five or ten times 
the number of their present parishioners, including all the 
sectarians. What should men have built such large 
churches for? We are told of their "piety and zeal;" 
yes, but there must have been men to raise the buildings. 
The Lord might favour the work, but there must have 
been hands as well as prayers. And what motive could 



370 

there have been for putting together such large quantities 
of stone and mortar, and to make walls four feet thick, and 
towers and steeples, if there had not been people to fill the 
buildings ? And how could the labour have been per- 
formed ? There must have been men to perform the 
labour ; and can anyone believe that this labour would 
have been performed if there had not been a necessity for 
it ? We now see large and most costly ancient churches, 
and these in great numbers too, with only a few mud huts 
to hold the thirty or a hundred of parishioners. Our fore- 
fathers built for ever, little thinking of the devastation that 
we were to behold ! Next come the lands, which they 
cultivated and which we do not, amounting to millions of 
acres. This anyone may verify who will go into Sussex, 
Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire and Cornwall. They 
grew corn on the sides of hills which we now never attempt 
to stir. They made the hill into the form of steps of 
stairs in order to plough and sow the flat parts. These 
flats or steps still remain and are, in some cases, still cul- 
tivated ; but in nine cases out of ten they are not. Why 
should they have performed this prodigious labour if they 
had not had mouths to eat the corn ? And how could they 
have performed such labour without numerous hands ? 
On the high lands of Hampshire and Dorsetshire there 
are spots of a thousand acres together which still bear the 
uneff"aceable marks of the plough, and which now never 
feel that implement. The modern writings on the subject 
of ancient population are mere romances, or they have been 
put forth with a view of paying court to the government of 
the day. George Chalmers, a placeman, a pensioner, and a 
Scotchman, has been one of the most conspicuous in this 
species of deception. He, in what he calls an " Estimate," 
states the population of England and Wales in 1377 at 
2,092,978. The half of these were, of course, females. 
The males then were 1,046,486. The children, the aged, 
the infirm, the sick, made a half of these ; so that there 



, 



377 

were 523,243 left of able-bodied men in this whole king- 
dom ! Now the churches and the religious houses 
amounted at that time to upwards of 16,000 in number. 
There was one priest to every church, and these priests, 
together with the monks and friars, must have amounted 
to about 40,000 able men, leaving 483,243 able men. So 
that, as there were more than 14,000 parish churches, there 
were not quite twelve able-bodied men to each ! Hume 
says that Wat Tyler had, in 1381 (four years after 
Chalmers's date), ** a hundred thousand men assembled on 
Blackheath,"^ so that, to say nothing of the numerous 
bodies of insurgents assembled at the same time ** in 
Hertford, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincoln ; " to say 
nothing of ''the king's army of 40,000;"' and to say 
nothing of all the nobility, gentry, and rich people, here Wat 
Tyler had got together on Blackheath more than one-fifth 
of all the able-bodied men in England and Wales ! And 
he had, too, collected them together in the space of about 
six days ! Do we want, can we want, anything more than 
this in answer, in refutation of these writers on the ancient 
population of the country ? Let it be observed that in 
these days there were, as Hume himself relates, and his 
authorities relate also, frequently 100,000 pilgrims at a time 
assembled at Canterbury to do penance or make offerings 
at the shrine of Thomas-a-Becket. There must then 
have been 50,000 men here at once ; so that, if we were to 
believe this pensioned Scotch writer, we must believe that 
more than a tenth of all the able-bodied men of England 
and W"ales were frequently assembled at one and the same 
time, in one city, in an extreme corner of the island, to 
kneel at the tomb of one single saint. Monstrous lie ! 
And yet it has been sucked down by " enlightened Protes- 
tants " as if it had been part of the Gospel. But if 



2 History y i., p. 540. 
>• Ibid. 



373 

Canterbury could give entertainment to 100,000 strangers 
at a time, what must Canterbury itself have been ? A 
grand, a noble, a renowned city it was, venerated and 
even visited by no small part of the kings, princes, and 
nobles of all Europe. It is now a beggarly, gloomy-looking 
town, with about 12,000 inhabitants, and, as the published 
accounts say, with 3,000 of its inhabitants paupers, and 
with a part of the site of its ancient and splendid churches, 
convents, and streets, covered with barracks, the cathedral 
only remaining for the purpose, as it were, of keeping the 
people in mind of the height from which they have fallen. 
The best criterion of the population is, however, to be 
found in the number and size of the churches, and that of 
the religious houses. There was one parish church to 
every four square miles throughout the kingdom ; and one 
religious house (including all the kinds) to every thirty 
square miles. That is to say, one parish church to every 
piece of land two miles each way ; and one religious house 
to every piece of land five miles long and six miles wide. 
These are facts that nobody can deny. The geography 
tells us the number of square miles in the country, and 
as to the number of parishes and religious houses, it is too 
well known to admit of dispute, being recorded in books 
without number. Well then, if the father of lies himself 
were to come and endeavour to persuade us that England 
was not more populous before the " Reformation " than it 
is now, he must fail with all but downright idiots. The 
same may be said with regard to Ireland, where there were, 
according to Archdall, 742 religious houses in the reign of 
Henry VIII., and, of course, one of these to every piece 
of land six miles each way ; and where there was a parish 
church to every piece of land a little more than two miles 
and a half each way. Why these churches ? What were 
they built for ? By whom were they built ? And how 
were all these religious houses maintained ? Alas ! Ireland 
was in those days a fine, a populous, and a rich country. 



379 

Her people were not then half-naked and half-starved. 
There were then no projects for relieving the Irish by 
sending them out of their native land ! 

454. The wealth of the country is a question easily 
decided. In the reign of Henry VIII., just before the 
" Reformation," the whole of the lands in England and 
Wales had, according to Hume, been rated, and the annual 
rental was found to be three millions ; and, as to this, 
Hume quotes undoubted authorities. Now, in order to 
know what these three miUions were worth in our money 
we must look at the Act of Parliament, 24th year of 
Henry VIII., chapter 3, which says, that ''no person shall 
take for beef or pork above a half-penny, and for mutton 
or veal above three-farthings a pound, avoirdupois weight, 
and less in those places where they be now sold for less." 
This is by retail, mind. It is sale in the butchers' shops. 
So that, in order to compare the then with the present 
amount of the rental of the country, we must first see what 
the annual rental of England and Wales now is, and then 
we must see what the price of meat now is. I wish to 
speak here of nothing that I have not unquestionable 
authority for, and I have no such authority with regard to 
the amount of the rental as it is just at this moment ; but I 
have that authority for what the rental was in the year 
1804. A return, printed by order of the House of 
Commons, and dated loth July, 1804, states, that "the 
returns to the Tax-office (property tax) prove the rack- 
rental of England and Wales to be thirty-eight millions a 
year." Here, then, we have the rental to a certainty ; foi 
what was there that could escape the all- searching, taxing 
eye of Pitt and his understrappers ? King Henry's inex- 
perience must have made him a poor hand, compared with 
Pitt, at finding out what people got for their land. Pitt's 
return included the rent of mines, canals, and of every 
species of real property ; and the rental, the rack-rental, ot 
the whole amounted to thirty-eight millions. This, ob- 



38o 

serve, was in time of bank restriction, in time of high 
prices, in time of monstrously high rents, in time of high 
price of meat : that very year I gave eighteen shillings a 
score for fat hogs, taking head, feet, and all together ; and 
for many years before and after, and including 1804, beef, 
pork, mutton and veal were, taken on the average, more 
than tenpence a pound by retail. Now, as Henry's Act 
orders the meat to be sold, in some places, for less than the 
half-penny and the three-farthings, we may, I think, fairly 
presume that the general price was a half-penny. So that 
a half-penny of Henry's money was equal in value to 
tenpence of Pitt's money ; and, therefore, the three millions 
of rental in the time of Henry ought to have become sixty 
millions in 1804 ; and it was, as we have seen, only thirty- 
eight millions. In 1822, Mr. Curwin said, the rental had 
fallen to twenty millions. But, then, meat had also fallen 
in price. It is safer to take 1804, where we have un- 
doubted authority to go on. This proof is of a nature to 
bid defiance to cavil. No man can dispute any of the 
facts, and they are conclusive as to the point that the 
nation was more wealthy before the " Reformation " than 
it is now. But there are two other Acts of Parliament 
to which I will refer as corroborating in a very striking 
manner this fact of the superior general opulence of 
Catholic times. The Act, i8th year of Henry VI., chap. 
II, after setting forth the cause for the enactment, pro- 
vides that no man shall, under a heavy penalty, act as a 
justice of the peace who has not lands and tenements of 
the clear yearly value of twenty pounds. This was in 
1439, about a hundred years before the above-mentioned 
act about meat of Henry VIII. The money was of still 
higher value in the reign of Henry VI. However, taking 
it as before, at twenty times the value of our money, the 
justice of the peace must then have had four hundred 
pounds a year of our money ; and we all know that we 
have justices of the peace of one hundred a year. This 



381 

Act of Henry VI. shows that the country abounded in 
gentlemen of good estate ; and, indeed, the Act itself says 
that the people are not contented with having "men of 
small behaviour set over them." A thousand fellows, 
calling themselves historians, would never overset such a 
proof of the superior general opulence and ease and happi- 
ness of the country. The other of the Acts to which I 
have alluded is ist year Richard III., chap. 4, which fixes 
the qualification of a juror at twenty shillings a year in 
freehold, or twenty-six and eightpence copyhold, clear of 
all charges. That is to say, a clear yearly income from 
real property of, at least, twenty pounds a year of our 
money ! And yet the Scotch historians would make us 
believe that our ancestors were a set of beggars ! These 
things prove beyond all dispute that England was, in 
Catholic times, a really wealthy country ; that wealth was 
generally diffused ; that every part of the country abounded 
in men of solid property ; and that, of course, there were 
always great resources at hand in cases of emergency. If 
we were now to take it into our heads to dislike to have 
men of " small behaviour set over us ; " if we were to take 
a fancy to justices of the peace of four hundred a year, and 
jurors of twenty pounds a year ; if we were, as in the days 
of good King Henry, to say that we " would not be 
governed nor ruled " by men of '* small behaviour," how 
quickly we should see Botany Bay ! When Cardinal Pole 
landed at Dover, in the reign of Queen Mary, he was met 
and escorted on his way by two thousand gentlemen of the 
country on horseback. What ! 2,000 country gentlemen 
in so beggarly a country as Chalmers describes it ! Aye, 
and they must have been found in Kent and Surrey too. 
Can we find such a troop of country gentlemen there now ? 
In short, everything shows that England was then a 
country abounding in men of real wealth, and that it so 
abounded precisely because the king's revenue was small ; 
yet this is cited by Hume and the rest of the Scotch his- 



382 

torians as a proof of the nation's poverty ! Their notion 
is that a people are worth what the government can wring 
out of them, and not a farthing more. And this is the 
doctrine which has been acted upon ever since the '* Refor- 
mation," and which has at last brought us into our present 
wretched condition. 

455. As to the power of the country compared with 
what it is now, what do we want more than the fact that 
for many centuries before the '* Reformation " England 
held possession of a considerable part of France ; that the 
** Reformation " took, as we have seen, the two towns of 
Boulogne and Calais from her, leaving her nothing but 
those little specks in the sea, Jersey and Guernsey ? What 
do we want more than this ? France was never a country 
that had any pretensions to cope with England until the 
*' Reformation " began. Since the *' Reformation " she 
has not only had such pretensions, but she has shown to 
all the world that the pretensions are well founded. She 
even at this moment holds Spain in despite of us, while 
in its course the " Reformation " has wrested from us a 
large portion of our dominions, and has erected them into 
a state more formidable than any we have ever before 
beheld. We have, indeed, great standing armies, arsenals, 
and barracks, of which our Catholic forefathers had none ; 
but they were always ready for war nevertheless. They 
had the resources in the hour of necessity. They had 
arms and men ; and those men knew what they were to 
fight for before they took up arms. It is impossible to 
look back, to see the respect in which England was held 
for so many, many ages, to see the deference with which she 
was treated by all nations, without blushing at the thought 
of our present state. None but the greatest potentates 
presumed to think of marriage alliances with England. 
Her kings and queens had kings and princes in their train. 
Nothing petty ever thought of approaching her. She was 
held in such high honour, her power was so universally 



383 

acknowledged, that she had seldom occasion to assert it by 

war. And what has she been for the last hundred and 
fifty years ? Above half the time at war ; and with a debt 
never to be paid, the cost of that war, she now rests her 
hopes of safety solely on her capacity of persuading her 
well-known foes that it is not their interest to assail her. 
Her warlike exertions have been the effect, not of her 
resources, but of an anticipation of those resources. She 
has mortgaged, she has spent beforehand, the resources 
necessary for future defence. And there she now is, 
inviting insult and injury by her well-known weakness, 
and, in case of attack, her choice lies between foreign 
victory over her or internal convulsion. Power is relative. 
You may have more strength than you had, but if your 
neighbours have gained strength in a greater degree, you 
are, in effect, weaker than you were. And can we look at 
France and America, and can we contemplate the inevi- 
table consequences of war, without feeling that we are fast 
becoming, and indeed that we are already become a low 
and little nation ? Can we look back to the days of our 
Catholic ancestors, can we think of their lofty tone and of 
the submission instantly produced by their threats, without 
sighing, " Alas ! those days are never to return " ? 

456, And as to the freedom of the nation, where is the 
man who can tell me of any one single advantage that 
the " Reformation " has brought, except it be freedom to 
have forty religious creeds instead of one ? Freedom is 
not an empty sound ; it is not an abstract idea ; it is not 
a thing that nobody can feel. It means, — and it means 
nothing else, — the full and quiet enjoyment of your own 
property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured 
to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are 
a slave. Now, our Catholic forefathers took special care 
upon this cardinal point. They suffered neither kings 
nor parliaments to touch their property without cause 
clearly shown. They did not read newspapers, they did 



384 

not talk about debates, they had no taste for "mentau 
enjoyment ; " but they thought hunger and thirst greac 
evils, and they never suffered anybody to put them to 
board on cold potatoes and water. They looked upon 
bare bones and rags as indubitable marks of slavery, and 
they never failed to resist any attempt to affix these marks 
upon them. You may twist the word freedom as long as 
you please, but at last it comes to quiet enjoyment of your 
own property, or it comes to nothing. Why do men want 
any of those things that are called political rights and 
privileges ? Why do they, for instance, want to vote at 
elections for members of parliament ? Oh ! because they 
shall then have an influence over the conduct of those 
members. And of what use is that ? Oh ! then they 
will prevent the members from doing wrong. What 
wrong ? Why, imposing taxes that ought not to be paid. 
That is all ; that is the use, and the only use, of any right 
or privilege that men in general can have. Now how 
stand we in this respect compared with our Catholic 
ancestors ? They did not perhaps all vote at elections. 
But do we ? Do a fiftieth part of us ? And have the 
main body of us any, even the smallest, influence in the 
making of laws and in the imposing of taxes ? But the 
main body of the people had the Church to protect them 
in Catholic times. The Church had great power, and it 
was naturally the guardian of the common people ; neither 
kings nor parliaments could set its power at defiance : 
the whole of our history shows that the Church was 
invariably on the side of the people, and that in all the 
much and justly boasted triumphs which our forefathers 
obtained over their kings and nobles the Church took 
the lead. It did this because it was dependent upon 
neither kings nor nobles ; because, and only because, it 
acknowledged another head ; but we have lost the pro- 
tection of the Church, and have got nothing to supply its 
place ; or rather, whatever there is of its power left has 



I 



385 

joined, or rather been engrossed by, the other branches of 
the state, leaving the main body of the people to the 
mercy of those other branches. *' The liberties of Eng- 
land " is a phrase in every moath, but what are those 
liberties ? The laws which regulate the descent and 
possession of property ; the safety from arrest, unless by 
due and settled process ; the absence of all punishment 
without trial before duly authorised and well-known judges 
and magistrates ; the trial by jury ; the precautions taken 
by the divers writs and summonses ; the open trial ; the 
impartiality in the proceedings. These are the " hberties 
of England." And had our Catholic forefathers less of 
these than we have ? Do we not owe them all to them ? 
Have we one single law that gives security to property or 
to life which we do not inherit from them ? The tread- 
mill, the law to shut men up in their houses from sunset 
to sunrise, the law to banish us for life if we utter anything 
having a tendency to bring our " representatives " into 
contempt; these indeed we do not inherit, but may 
boast of them, and of many others of much about the 
same character, as being unquestionably of pure Pro- 
testant origin. 

457. Poverty, however, is after all the great badge, the 
never-failing badge of slavery. Bare bones and rags are 
the true marks of the real slave. What is the object of 
government ? To cause men to live happily. They can- 
not be happy without a sufficiency of food and of raiment. 
Good government means a state of things in which the 
main body are well fed and well clothed. It is the chief 
business of a government to take care that one part of 
the people do not cause the other part to live miserable 
lives. There can be no morality, no virtue, no sincerity, 
no honesty, amongst a people continually suffering from 
want ; and it is cruel in the last degree to punish such 
people for almost any sort of crime, which is in fact, not 

25 



386 

crime of the heart, not crime of the perpetrator, but crim6 
of his all-controlling necessities. 

458. To what degree the main body of the people in 
England are now poor and miserable, how deplorably 
wretched they now are, this we know but too well ; and 
now we will see what was their state before this vaunted 
" Reformation." I shall be very particular to cite my 
authorities here. I will infer nothing ; I will give no 
"estimate," but refer to authorities such as no man can 
call in question, such as no man can deny to be proofs 
more complete than if founded on oaths of credible 
witnesses, taken before a judge and jury. I shall begin 
with the account which Fortescue gives of the state and 
manner of living of the English in the reign of Henry VI., 
that is, in the fifteenth century, when the Catholic Church 
was in the height of its glory. Fortescue was Lord 
Chief Justice of England for nearly twenty years ; he was 
appointed Lord High Chancellor by Henry VI. Being 
in exile in France, in consequence of the wars between 
the Houses of York and Lancaster, and the King's son, 
Prince Edward, being also in exile with him, the Chancellor 
wrote a series of letters addressed to the prince, to explain 
to him the nature and effect of the laws of England, and 
to induce him to study them and uphold them. This work, 
which was written in Latin, is called De Laudihus Legum 
Anglice : or Praise of the Laws of England. This book was 
many years ago translated into English, and it is a book of 
law authority quoted frequently in our courts at this day. 
No man can doubt the truth of facts relating to such a work. 
It was a work written by a famous lawyer for a prince, 
it was intended to be read by other contemporary lawyers, 
and by all lawyers in future. The passage that I am about 
to quote, relating to the state of the English, was purely 
incidental ; it was not intended to answer any temporary 
purpose. It must have been a true account. 

459. The Chancellor, after speaking generally of the 



387 

nature of the laws of England, and of the difference be- 
tween them and the laws of France, proceeds to show the 
difference in their effects by a description of the state of 
the French people, and then by a description of the state 
of the English. His words, — words that, as I transcribe 
them, make my cheeks burn with shame, — are as follows : 
" Besides all this, the inhabitants of France give every 
year to their king the fourth part of all their wines, the 
growth of that year ; every vintner gives the fourth penny 
of what he makes of his wine by sale. And all the towns 
and boroughs pay to the king yearly great sums of money, 
which are assessed upon them for the expenses of his men- 
at-arms. So that the king's troops, which are always 
considerable, are subsisted and paid yearly by those 
common people who live in the villages, boroughs, and 
cities. Another grievance is, every village constantly 
finds and maintains two cross-bow-men at the least, — some 
find more, — well arrayed in all their accoutrements, to serve 
the king in his wars as often as he pleaseth to call them 
out, which is frequently done. Without any consideration 
had of these things, other very heavy taxes are assessed 
yearly upon every village within the kingdom for the 
king's service ; neither is there ever any intermission or 
abatement of taxes. Exposed to these and other cala- 
mities, the peasants live in great hardship and misery. 
Their constant drink is water, neither do they taste 
throughout the year any other liquor, unless upon some 
extraordinary times or festival days. Their clothing con- 
sists of frocks or little jerkins made of canvas, no better 
than common sackcloth ; they do not wear any woollens 
except of the coarsest sort, and that only in the garments 
under their frocks ; nor do they wear any trowse but 
from the knees upwards, their legs being exposed and 
naked. The women go barefoot except on holidays. 
They do not eat flesh, except it be the fat of bacon, and 
that in very small quantities, with which they make a 



388 

soup. Of other sorts, either boiled or roasted, they do 
not so much as taste, unless it be of the inwards and offals 
of sheep and bullocks, and the like, which are killed for 
the use of the better sort of people and the merchants, 
for whom also quails, partridges, hares, and the like, are 
reserved upon pain of the galleys : as for their poultry, the 
soldiers consume them, so that scarce the eggs, slight as 
they are, are indulged them by way of a dainty. And if it 
happen that a man is observed to thrive in the world and 
become rich, he is presently assessed to the king's tax, 
proportionably more than his poorer neighbours, whereby 
he is soon reduced to a level with the rest." * Then comes 
his description of the English at the same time ; those 
*' priest-ridden " English, whom Chalmers and Hume, and 
the rest of that tribe, would fain have us believe were a 
mere band of wretched beggars. ** The king of England 
cannot alter the laws or make new ones without the ex- 
press consent of the whole people in parliament assembled. 
Every inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy 
whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth, the 
increase of his flock, and the like ; all the improvements 
he makes, whether by his own proper industry or of those 
he retains in his service, are his own to use and to enjoy 
without the let, interruption, or denial of any. If he be in 
anywise injured or oppressed, he shall have his amends 
and satisfactions against the party offending. Hence it is 
that the inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in all the 
necessaries and conveniences of life. They drink no 
water, unless at certain times upon a religious score, and 
by way of doing penance. They are fed in great abun- 
dance with all sorts of flesh and fish, of which they have 
plenty everywhere; they are clothed throughout in good 



* Fortescue, De Laudibus Leguni Anglice (translated), ed. 1775, P- 124 
stqq. The chapter treats of the state of France under the absolute rule of 
Louis XI, 



389 

woollens ; their bedding and other furniture in their houses 
are of wool, and that in great store. They are also well 
provided with all other sorts of household goods and 
necessary implements for husbandry. Every one accord- 
ing to his rank hath all things which conduce to make life 
easy and happy."* 

460. Go and read this to the poor souls who are now 
eating sea-weed in Ireland, who are detected in robbing 
the pig-troughs in Yorkshire, who are eating horse flesh 
and grains (draff) in Lancashire and Cheshire, who are 
harnessed like horses and drawing gravel in Hampshire 
and Sussex, who have 2d. a day allowed them by the 
magistrates in Norfolk, who are all over England worse 
fed than the felons in the gaols. Go and tell them, when 
they raise their hands from the pig-trough or from the 
grains-tub and with their dirty tongues cry *' No Popery," — 
go, read to the degraded and deluded wretches this account 
of the state of their Catholic forefathers, who lived under 
what is impudently called " Popish superstition and 
tyranny," and in those times which we have the audacity 
to call " the dark ages." 

461. Look at the then picture of the French ; and, Pro- 
testant Englishmen, if you have the capacity of blushing 
left, blush at the thought of how precisely that picture fits 
the English now ! Look at all the parts of the picture, 
the food, the raiment, the game. Good God ! If anyone 
had told the old Chancellor that the day would come when 
this picture, and even a picture more degrading to human 
nature, would fit his own boasted country, what would he 
have said ? What would he have said if he had been told 
that the time was to come when the soldier in England 
would have more than twice, nay, more than thrice the 
sum allowed to the day-labouring man; when potatoes 
would be carried to the field as the only food of the 

* Fortescue, De Laudibus Legurn Auglicz, p. 127 seqq. 



390 

ploughman; when soup-shops would be opened to feed 
the English; and when the judges, sitting on that very 
bench on which he himself had sat for twenty years, 
would (as in the case last year of the complaint against 
the magistrates at Northallerton), declare that bread and 
water were the general food of working-people in England ? 
What would he have said? Why, if he had been told 
that there was to be a *' Reformation," accompanied by a 
total devastation of Church and Poor property, upheld by 
wars, creating an enormous debt and enormous taxes, and 
requiring a constantly standing army, — if he had been told 
this he would have foreseen our present state and would 
have wept for his country ; but if he had, in addition, been 
told that even in the midst of all this suffering we should 
still have the ingratitude and the baseness to cry ** No 
Popery," and the injustice and the cruelty to persecute 
those Englishmen and Irishmen who adhered to the faith 
of their pious, moral, brave, free and happy fathers, he 
would have said, " God's will be done : let them suffer." 

462. But it may be said that it was not, then, the 
CathoHc Church but the laws that made the English so 
happy, for the French had that Church as well as the 
English. Aye ! But in England the Church was the very 
basis of the laws. The very first clause of Magna Charta 
provided for the stability of its property and rights. A 
provision for the indigent, an effectual provision, was 
made by the laws that related to the Church and its 
property ; and this was not the case in France, and never 
was the case in any country but this ; so that the English 
people lost more by a " Reformation " than any other 
people could have lost. 

463. Fortescue's authority would of itself be enough, 
but I am not to stop with it. White, the late rector of 
Selborne, in flampshire, gives, in his history of that once 
famous village, an extract from a record, stating that for 
disorderly conduct men were punished by being " com 



391 

pelled to fast a fortnight on bread and beer ! " This was 
about the year 1380, in the reign of Richard II. Oh ! 
miserable ** dark ages " ! This fact must be true. White 
had no purpose to answer. His mention of the fact, or 
rather his transcript from the record, is purely incidental ; 
and trifling as the fact is, it is conclusive as to the general 
mode of living in those happy days. Go, tell the har- 
nessed gravel-drawers in Hampshire to cry " No Popery," 
for that if the Pope be not put down he may in time 
compel them to fast on bread and beer, instead of suffering 
them to continue to regale themselves on nice potatoes 
and pure water. 

464. But let us come to Acts of Parliament, and first to 
the Act above quoted, in paragraph 454, which see. That 
Act fixes the price of meat. After naming the four sorts 
of meat, beef, pork, mutton and veal, the preamble has 
these words : *' These being the food of the poorer sort." 
This is conclusive. It is an incidental mention of a fact. 
It is an Act of Parliament. It must have been true ; and 
it is a fact that we know well, that even the judges have 
declared from the bench, that bread alone is now the food 
of the poorer sort. What do we want more than this to 
convince us that the main body of the people have been 
impoverished by the " Reformation " ? 

465. But I will prove by other Acts of Parliament this 
Act of Parliament to have spoken truth. These Acts 
declare what the wages of workmen shall be. There are 
several such Acts, but one or two may suffice. The Act 
of 23rd of Edward III. fixes the wages, without food, as 
follows. There are many other things mentioned, but the 
following will be enough for our purpose : — 

A woman hay-making or weeding corn for the day* ... .« o i 

A man filling dung-cart .« .« .« .« -m o 3J 

A reaper ... .^ .•• .m .*« .^ O 4 

Mowing an acre of grass ... .«. ... ... .^ O 6 

Threshing a quarter of wheat ... ... ... .« o 4 

* Fleetwood, Chronicon Preciosum, ed. 1745, P> 129* 



392 

The price of shoes, cloth, and of provisions, throughout 
the time that this law continued in force was as follows : — 



£ 


s. 


d. 




£ 


s. 


d. 


A pair of shoes ... o 


o 


4 


A fat hog 2 years old 


o 


3 


4 


Russet broad -cloth the 






A fat goose... 


o 


o 


4 


yard O 


I 


I 


Ale, the gallon, by 








A stall-fed ox ... i 


4 


o 


proclamation 


o 


o 


I 


A grass-fed ox ... o 


i6 


o 


Wieat the quarter ... 


o 


3 


4 


A fat sheep unshorn... o 


I 


8 


White wine the gallon 


o 


o 


6 


A fat sheep shorn ... o 


I 


2 


Red wine 


o 


o 


4 



These prices are taken from the Preciosum of Bishop 
Fleetwood, who took them from the accounts kept by the 
bursars of convents. All the world knows that Fleetwood's 
book is of undoubted authority.' 

466. We may, then, easily believe that "beef, pork, 
mutton and veal were the food of the poorer sort," when a 
dung-cart filler had more than the price of a fat goose and 
a-half for a day's work, and when a woman was allowed 
for a day's weeding the price of a quart of red wine ! Two 
yards of the cloth made a coat for the shepherd, and as it 
cost 2s. 2d., the reaper would earn it in 6|- days ; and the 
dung-cart man would earn very nearly a pair of shoes every 
day ! The dung-cart filler would earn a fat shorn sheep in 
four days ; he would earn a fat hog, two years old, in 
twelve days ; he would earn a grass-fed ox in twenty days ; 
so that we may easily believe that " beef, pork, veal and 
mutton " were '' the food of the poorer sort." And, mind, 
this was ** a priest-ridden people," a people '* buried in 
Popish superstition ! " In our days of " Protestant light " 
and of " mental enjoyment " the " poorer sort " are allowed 
by the magistrates of Norfolk threepence a day for a single 
man able to work. That is to say, a halfpenny less than 
the Catholic dung-cart man had ; and that threepence will 
get the " no popery " gentleman about six ounces of old 

Fleetwood, Chronicon Preciosum^ p. 71 seqq. 



393 

ewe mutton, while the Popish dung-cart man got for his 

day rather more than the quarter of a fat sheep.® 

467. But the Popish people might work harder than 
" enlightened Protestants." They might do more work in 
a day. This is contrary to all the assertions of the 
** feelosofers," for they insist that the Catholic religion made 
people idle. But, to set this matter at rest, let us look at 
the price of the job-labour, at the mowing by the acre and 
at the threshing of wheat by the quarter, and let us see 
how these wages are now, compared with the price of food. 
I have no parliamentary authority since the year 1821, 
when a report was printed by order of the House of 
Commons, containing the evidence of Mr. EUman of 
Sussex, as to wages, and of Mr. George, of Norfolk, as to 
price of wheat. The report was dated i8th June, 1821. 
The accounts are for twenty years on an average, from 
1800 inclusive. We will now proceed to see how the 
" Popish, priest-ridden " Englishman stands in comparison 
with the ** No-Popery " Englishman : — 

Popish Man. No-Popery Man. 
t. d. s. d. 

Mowing an acre of grass .„ ^ o 6 3 71 

Threshing a quarter of wheat 04 40 

Here are " waust improvements, Mau'm ! ** But now 
let us look at the relative price of the wheat which the 

• It may pass through the mind of some readers that the picture drawn 
by Cobbett with such vigour, or even passion, must be an exaggeration, 
nay, a caricature. Yet the genius of the man had divined and grasped 
the truth ; and he only anticipated the results arrived at by the exact 
investigations of the present day. The late Professor Thorold Rogers, 
who devoted the whole of a laborious life to an enquiry into the economic 
history of England, comes, so far as this period is concerned, to the same 
conclusion as Cobbett himself. Indeed, the words in which he delivers 
what may be termed a scientific conclusion form almost a heavier indict- 
ment than that framed by Cobbett's indignation. The extract from The 
Economic Interpretation of History is long and is thrown into an appendix ; 
but it must not on that account be overlooked. 



394 

labourer had to purchase with his wages. We have seen 
that the " popish superstition slave " had to give 5d. a 
bushel for his wheat, and the evidence of Mr. George 
states that the "enlightened Protestant" had to give los. 
a bushel for his wheat, that is, twenty-four times as much 
as the *' popish fool," who suffered himself to be " priest- 
ridden." So that the "enlightened" man, in order to 
make him as well off as the " dark ages " man was, 
ought to receive i2s. instead of 3s. 7|d. for mowing an 
acre of grass ; and he in like manner ought to receive, for 
threshing a quarter of wheat, 8s., instead of the 4s. which 
he does receive. If we had the records we should doubt- 
less find that Ireland was in the same state. 

468. There ! That settles the matter ; and if the Bible 
Society and the " Education" and the ^' Christian know- 
ledge " gentry would, as they might, cause this little book 
to be put into the hands of all their millions of pupils, it 
would, as far as relates to this kingdom, settle the question 
of religion for ever and ever. I have now proved that 
Fortescue's description of the happy life of our Catholic 
ancestors was correct. There wanted no proof, but I have 
given it. I could refer to divers other Acts of Parliament, 
passed during several centuries, all confirming the truth 
of Fortescue's account. And there are in Bishop Fleet- 
wood's book many things that prove that the labouring 
people were most kindly treated by their superiors, and 
particularly by the clergy ; for instance, he has an item in 
the expenditure of a convent, " 30 pair of autumnal gloves 
for the servants." This was sad " superstition." In our 
" enHghtened " and Bible-reading age, who thinks of 
gloves for ploughmen ? We have priests as well as the 
"dark ages" people had; ours ride as well as theirs, but, 
theirs fed at the same time ; both mount, but theirs seem 
to have used the rein more and spur less. It is curious to 
observe that the pay of persons in high situations was, as 
compared with that of the present day, very low when 



395 

compared with the pay of the working classes. If you 
calculate the year's pay of the dung-cart man, you will 
find it, if multiplied by 20 (which brings it to our money) 
to amount to 91 pounds a year, while the average pay of 
the judges did not exceed £^0 a year of the then money, 
and, of course, did not exceed ;^i,20o a year of our money. 
So that a judge had not so much pay as fourteen dung- cart 
fillers. To be sure, judges had in those " dark ages," 
when Littleton and Fortescue lived and wrote, pretty easy 
lives; for Fortescue says that they led lives of great 
" leisure and contemplation," and that they never sat in 
court but three hours in a day, from 8 to 11.® Alas ! if they 
had lived in this " enlightened age " they would have found 
little time for their "contemplation"! They would have 
found plenty of work, they would have found that theirs 
was no sinecure, at any rate, and that ten times their pay 
was not adequate to their enormous labour. Here is 
another indubitable proof of the great and general happi- 
ness and harmony and honesty and innocence that reigned 
in the country. The judges had lives of leisure ! In that 
one fact, incidentally stated by a man who had been 
twenty years Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, we have 
the true character of the so long calumniated religion of 
our fathers. 

469. As to the bare fact, this most interesting fact, that 
the main body of the people have been impoverished and 
degraded since the time of the Catholic sway ; as to this 
fact, there can be no doubt in the mind of any man who 
has thus far read this little work. Neither can there, I 
think, exist in the mind of such a man any doubt that this 
impoverishment and this degradation have been caused by 



^ De Laudibus Leguin Anglia^ ed. 1775, pp. 185. " The judges, when 
they have taken their refreshments, spend the rest of the day in the study 
of the laws, reading of the Holy Scriptures, and other innocent amuse- 
ments at their pleasure." 



396 

the event called the " Reformation," seeing that I have in 
former chapters, and especially in Chapter XIV., clearly 
traced the debt and the enormous taxes to that event. Biit 
I cannot bring myself to conclude without tracing the im- 
poverishment in its horrible progress. The well known 
fact that no compulsory collections for the poor, that the 
disgraceful name of pauper, that these were never heard of 
in England in Catholic times, and that they were heard of 
the moment the " Reformation " had begun ; this single 
fact might be enough, and it is enough ; but we will see 
the progress of this Protestant impoverishment. 

470. The Act, 27 Henry VIII., chap. 25, began the 
poor laws. The monasteries were not actually seized on 
till the next year ; but the fabric of the Catholic Church 
was, in fact, tumbling down, and instantly the country 
swarmed with necessitous people, and open begging, which 
the government of England had always held in great 
horror, began to disgrace this so lately happy land. To 
put a stop to this the above Act authorised sheriffs, magis- 
trates, and churchwardens to cause voluntary alms to be 
collected ; and at the same time it punished the persever- 
ing beggar by slicing off part of his ears, and, for a second 
offence, put him to death as a felon ! This was the dawn 
of that " Reformation " which we are still called upon to 
admire and to praise ! 

471. "The pious young Saint Edward," as Fox the 
Martyr-man most impiously calls him, began his Protes- 
tant reign, ist year Edward VI., chap. 3, by an Act, 
punishing beggars by burning them with a red-hot iron 
and by making them slaves for two years, with power in 
their masters to make them wear an iron collar, and to 
feed them upon bread and water and refuse meat ! For 
even in this case still there was meat for those who had to 
labour : the days of cold potatoes and of bread and water 
alone were yet to come ; they were reserved for our 
" enlightened " and Bible-reading days, our days of " men- 



397 

tal enjoyment." And as to horse flesh and draff (grains), 
they appear never to have been even thought of. If 
the slave ran away, or were disobedient, he was by this 
Protestant Act to be a slave for life. This Act came forth 
as a sort of precursor of the Acts to establish the Church 
of England. Horrid tyranny ! The people had been 
plundered of the resource which Magna Charta, which 
justice, which reason, which the law of nature gave them. 
No other resource had been provided, and they were made 
actual slaves, branded and chained because they sought 
by their prayers to allay the cravings of hunger ! 

472. Next came " good Queen Bess," who, after trying 
her hand eight times without success to cause the poor 
to be relieved by alms, passed that compulsory Act which 
is in force to the present day. All manner of shifts had 
been resorted to in order to avoid this provision for the 
poor. During this and the two former reigns licences 
to beg had been granted. But at last the compulsory 
assessment came, that true mark, that indelible mark of 
the Protestant Church as by law established. This assess- 
ment was put off" to the last possible moment, and it was 
never relished by those who had got the spoils of the 
Church and the poor. But it was a measure of absolute 
necessity. All the racks, all the law-martial of this cruel 
reign could not have kept down the people without this 
Act, the authors of which seem to have been ashamed to 
state the grounds of it, for it has no preamble whatever. 
The people so happy in former times, the people described 
by Fortescue, were now become a nation of ragged 
wretches. Defoe, in one of his tracts, says that Elizabeth 
in her progress through the kingdom, upon seeing the 
miserable looks of the crowds that came to see her, fre- 
quently exclaimed, ^* pauper ubique jacetf* that is, the poor 
cover the land. And this was that same country in which 
Fortescue left a race of people, " having all things which 
conduce to make life easy and happy " ! 



398 

473* Things did not mend much during the reigns of 
the Stuarts, except in as far as the poor-law had effect. 
This rendered unnecessary the barbarities that had been 
exercised before the passing of it ; and as long as taxation 
was light the paupers were comparatively little numerous. 
But when the taxes began to grow heavy, the projectors 
were soon at work to find out the means of putting down 
pauperism. Amongst these was one Child, a merchant 
and banker, whose name was Josiah, and who had been 
made a knight or baronet, for he is called Sir Josiah. His 
project, which was quite worthy of his calling, contained a 
provision, in his proposed Act, to appoint men to be called 
" Fathers of the poor ; " and one of the provisions relating 
to these " Fathers " was to be, " that they may have 
power to send such poor as they may think fit into any of 
his Majesty's plantations ! " That is to say, to transport 
and make slaves of them ! And, gracious God I this was 
in Fortescue's country! This was in the country of 
Magna Charta I And this monster dared to publish this 
project ! And we cannot learn that any man had the soul 
to reprobate the conduct of so hard-hearted a wretch. 

474. When the " Deliverer " had come, when a ** glorious 
revolution " had taken place, when a war had been carried 
on and a debt and a bank created, and all for the purpose 
of putting down Popery for ever, the poor began to in- 
crease at such a frightful rate that the Parliament referred 
the subject to the Board of Trade, to inquire and to report 
a remedy. Locke was one of the commissioners, and a 
passage in the Report of the Board is truly curious. 
" The multipHcity of the poor, and the increase of the tax 
for their maintenance, is so general an observation and 
complaint that it cannot be doubted of; nor has it been 
only since the last war that this evil has come upon us ; 
it has been a growing burden on the kingdom this many 
years, and the last two reigns felt the increase of it as well 
as the present. If the cause of this evil be looked into, we 



i 



399 

humbly conceive it will be found to have proceeded, not 
from the scarcity of provisions, nor want of employment 
for the poor ; since the goodness of God has blessed these 
times with plenty no less than the former ; and a long 
peace during three reigns gave us as plentiful a trade as 
ever. The growth of the poor must therefore have some 
other cause, and it can be nothing else but the relaxation 
of discipline and corruption ; virtue and industry being as 
constant companions on the one side, as vice and idleness 
are on the other." ^° 

475. So the fault was in the poor themselves ! It does 
not seem to have occurred to Mr. Locke that there must 
have been a cause for this cause. He knew very well that 
there was a time when there were no paupers at all in 
England ; but being a fat placeman under the ♦' Deliverer," 
he could hardly think of alluding to that interesting fact, 
" relaxation of discipline " I What discipline ? What 
did he mean by discipline? The taking away of the 
Church and poor's property, the imposing of heavy taxes, 
the giving of low wages compared with the price of food 
and raiment, the drawing away of the earnings of the poor, 
to be given to paper-harpies and other tax-eaters, these 
were the causes of the hideous and disgraceful evil ; this he 
knew very well, and therefore it is no wonder that his 
report contained no remedy. 

476. After Locke came, in the reign of Queen Anne, 
Defoe, who seems to have been the father of the present 
race of projectors, Malthus and Lawyer Scarlett being 
merely his humble followers. He was for giving no more 
relief to the poor ; he imputed their poverty to their 
crimes, and not their crimes to their poverty ; and their 
crimes he imputed to ** their luxury, pride and sloth." 
He said the English labouring people ate and drank three 

*" Report of the Board of Trade in the year i6^T, respecting the relief and 
employment of the poor. Drawn up by John Locke, p. 2. 



400 

times as much as foreigners ! How different were the 
notions of this insolent French Protestant from those of 
the Chancellor Fortescue, who looked upon the good living 
of the people as the best possible proof of good laws, and 
seems to have delighted in relating that the English were 
" fed in great abundance with all sorts of flesh and fish '* ! 

477. If Defoe had lived to our " enlightened age " he 
would, at any rate, have seen no " luxury " amongst the 
poor, unless he would have grudged them horse-flesh, draif 
(grains), sea-weed, or the contents of the pig-trough. 
From his day to the present there have been a hundred 
projects and more than fifty laws to regulate the affairs of 
the poor. But still the pauperism remains for the Catholic 
Church to hold up in the face of the Church of England. 
" Here," the former may say to the latter, " here, look at 
this; here is the result of your efforts to extinguish me; 
here, in this one evil, in this never ceasing, this degrading 
curse, I am more than avenged, if vengeance I were allowed 
to enjoy ; urge on the deluded potato-crammed creatures 
to cry, * No Popery ' still ; and when they retire to their 
straw, take care not to remind them of the cause of their 
poverty and degradation." 

478. Hume, in speaking of the sufferings of the people 
in the first Protestant reign, says, that at last those suffer- 
ings " produced good," for that they " led to our present 
situation." What, then ; he deemed our present situation 
a better one than that of the days of Fortescue ! To be 
sure Hume wrote fifty years ago, but he wrote long after 
Child, Locke, and Defoe. Surely enough the " Reforma- 
tion " has led to " our then present, and our now present 
situation." It has " at last " produced the bitter fruit of 
which we are now tasting. Evidence given, by a clergy- 
man too, and published by the House of Commons in 1824, 
states the labouring people of Suffolk to be a nest of 
robbers, too deeply corrupted ever to be reclaimed ; evi- 
dence of a Sheriff of Wiltshire (in 1821) states the common 



401 

food of the labourers in the field to be cold potatoes ; a 
scale, published by the magistrates of Norfolk, in 1825, 
allows threepence a day to a single labouring man ; the 
judges of the Court of King's Bench (1825) have declared 
the general food of the labouring people to be bread and 
water; intelligence from the northern counties (1826), 
published upon the spot, informs us that great numbers of 
people are nearly starving, and that some are eating horse- 
flesh and grains, while it is well known that the country 
abounds in food ; and while the clergy have recently put 
up from the pulpit the rubrical thanksgiving for times of 
plenty, a law recently passed, making it felony to take an 
apple from a tree, tells the world that our characters and 
lives are thought nothing worth, or that this nation, once 
the greatest and most moral in the world, is now a nation 
of incorrigible thieves, and, in either case, the most im- 
poverished, the most fallen, the most degraded that ever 
saw the light of the sun. 

479. I have now performed my task. I have made good 
the positions with which I began. Born and bred a Pro- 
testant of the Church of England, having a wife and 
numerous family professing the same faith, having the 
remains of most dearly beloved parents lying in a Pro- 
testant churchyard, and trusting to conjugal or filial piety 
to place mine by their side, I have in this undertaking had 
no motive, I can have had no motive, but a sincere and dis- 
interested love of truth and justice. It is not for the rich 
and the powerful of my countrymen that I have spoken ; 
but for the poor, the persecuted, the proscribed. I have 
not been unmindful of the unpopularity and the prejudice 
that would attend the enterprise ; but when I considered 
the long, long triumph of calumny over the religion of 
those to whom we owe all that we possess that is great 
and renowned ; when I was convinced that I could do 
much towards the counteracting of that calumny ; wlien 
duty so sacred bade me speak, it would have been base- 
26 



402 

ness to hold my tongue, and baseness superlative would it 
have been, if, having the will as well as the power, I had 
been restrained by fear of the shafts of falsehood and of 
folly. To be clear of self-reproach is amongst the greatest 
of human consolations ; and now, amidst all the dreadful 
perils which the event that I have treated of has at last 
surrounded my country, I can, while I pray God to save 
her from still further devastation and misery, safely say 
that neither expressly nor tacitly am I guilty of any part 
of the cause of her ruin. 



THE END. 



APPENDIX. 



The following extracts are taken from lectures on " The Economic 
Interpretation of History," delivered at Oxford in 1887-8 by Professor 
Thorold Rogers. The words are here given as a supplement to the note 
on p. 393. 

Speaking of a law of 2 Henry VII., cap. 22, Professor Rogers says: 
** A schedule of wages is given, which, considering the cheapness of the 
time, is exceedingly liberal. At no time in English history have the earn- 
ings of labourers, interpreted by their purchasing power, been so consider- 
able as those which this Act acknowledges. But the day is twelve hours 
from March to September, from daybreak till night for the rest of the year. 
It is certain that fifty years before the labour day was one of eight hours 
only, and the wages paid were far in excess of what was the statutable rate 
at the time " (p. 34). 

Again : " During all this time* the mass of English labourers, by no 
means claiming more than the reasonable reward for their services, were 
thriving under their guilds and trade unions, the peasants gradually acquir- 
ing laud, and becoming the numerous small freeholders of the first half 
of the seventeenth century, the artisans the master hands in their craft, 
contractors in the same period for considerable works, planning the solid 
and handsome structures in what is known of the Perpendicular style, and 
withal working with their own hands on the buildings which their shrewd- 
ness and experience had planned. It is true that at the very best age of 
the workman a ruin was impending, the causes of which I have been able 
10 collect and shall now proceed to expound " (p. 34). 

He then draws out the extravagance of Henry VIII., and the accom- 
panying dissolution of the monasteries, the confiscation of the guild lands 
by the Protector Somerset and the other unprincipled guardians of Edward 
VI., and the iniquity of the issue of base coinage. Of this last fact he 
writes, *' The base money had driven the working classes to beggary, and 
England, once the most powerful of western states, was of little more 
account in the policy of Europe than a petty German princedom was.* 
«« His (the labourer's) guild lands, the benefit societies of the Middle Ages 

* 1350-1500. 



404 

which systematically relieved destitution, were stolen by the greedy leadei 
of the new aristocracy, he had suffered eighteen years' experience of a 
debased currency, prices rose 150 per cent., and the wages of labour were 
almost stationary " (p. 37). 

Elizabeth indeed reformed the currency, but she introduced a new 
Statute of Labourers, which Professor Rogers styles infamous, and of which 
he thus speaks :—" In the Statute Book it is known as 5 Eliz., cap. 4. 
It began by repealing all the statutes which had regulated labour since 
23 Edward III., over two centuries before. It then took all that was most 
stringent from the statutes which I have already referred to, and put them 
into a comprehensive enactment, which was hereafter to regulate the 
relations of employer and labourer. I do not indeed believe that Eliza- 
beth and her councillors intended to deal unjustly by the workmen; 
some indeed of the clauses of the Act are intended for the working man's 
protection, but the mischief of the Act was in the machinery by which it 
would be carried out, and in the terribly depressed condition of the 
labourer. He was handed over to the mercy of his employer at a time 
when he was utterly incapable of resisting the grossest tyranny. The 
government of the day probably remembered the uprisings of Tyler and 
Cade, certainly that of Ket, and they determined to make use of an in- 
strument, the justices in quarter sessions, who would be able to check any 
discontent, even the discontent of despair, and might be trusted, if 
necessary, to starve the people into submission. We shall see how com- 
pletely success attended their efforts " (p. 38). 

After enumerating many hard provisions from the above statute, Professor 
Rogers quotes from it that " the justices are to enquire periodically into the 
execution of the Act, and to revise their rates according to the cheapness or 
dearness of the necessaries of life" (p. 40). But " the justices in quarter 
sessions took no note, as the statute instructed them, of ' the cheapness or 
dearness of provisions.' Their object was to get labour at starvation 
wages, and they did their best to effect their object. The law gave them 
the power, and provided no appeal from their decision " (p. 41). The 
first extant assessment of the justices (for the rate of wages) is of June 7» 
1563. "Altogether I have found thirteen of these assessments between 
the years 1563 and 1725. I believe that they were discontinued during 
the eighteenth century, not because the law was neglected, but because the 
assessment had effectually done the work for which it was designed, the 
labourers' wages being now reduced to a bare subsistence. The object of 
this celebrated or infamous statute was threefold — (i) to break up the 
iomomations of labourers, (2) to supply the adequate machinery of con- 
trol, and (3) by limiting the right of apprenticeship, to make the peasant 
iabourer the residuum of all other labour, or, in other words, to forcibly 
increase the supply " (p. 40). 



405 

Of the effect of the statute of Elizabeth upon the comfort of the labourer 
he says, "while the Act of 1495 enabled an artisan, in prices of that 
time, to procure a certain amount of food and drink with a fortnight's 
labour, at the rates of the statute, and an agricultural labourer to obtain 
the same with three weeks' labour, the justices' assessment rarely enabled 
the peasant to obtain the same quantities with a whole year's labour, and 
would sometimes have required two years' incessant labour. For it must 
be remembered that though the law pressed hardly on the artisan, it was 
intended to press far more hardly on the peasant, cheap agricultural labour, 
in the absence of any notable, as I shall show hereafter, any possible 
improvement in the art of agriculture, being, as was seen clearly enough, 
the best means by which, concurrently with a high price of produce, 
agricultural rents could be raised. ... It is true that in some particulars 
the position of the peasant was not so bad as it now is. He was rarely 
without his patch of land. . . . Again, beyond the plot which he held 
in severalty, the peasant had more or less extensive rights of common. 
The common, even if it did not afford herbage for his cow, was a run for 
his poultry, and assured him the occasional fowl in the pot. . . . These 
advantages, which one discovers by studying the social legislation and 
habits of the time, existed to an equal or a greater extent in the time of 
the first Tudor sovereign. It is the gradual deprivation of them, without 
any compensation beyond the concession of a bare subsistence, which marks 
the economical history of the poor as the centuries pass on. It is, I think, 
^ost probable that the practice of the quarter sessions assessment ceased 
in the south of England at the close of the seventeenth century, and in the 
north at the beginning of the eighteenth. It would be strange if the 
practice was continued, while agricultural history, now getting full of 
comments on the situation, is entirely silent on the subject. But in fact the 
justices had done their work. They had made low wages, famine wages, 
traditional, and these wages, insufficient by themselves, were supplemented 
from the poor rate" (pp. 41-43). 

•* Legislation for the relief of the poor, at first by voluntary contributions, 
began with the year 1541. Between this date and 1601 inclusive, when 
the first and permanent statute of Elizabeth was enacted, there were 
twelve Acts of Parliament passed with the distinct object of providing 
relief against destitution " (p. 241). 

" The fact that laws for the relief of the poor were enacted after the 
Dissolution of the monasteries has led some writers to connect them with 
this event. Others have pointed out, perhaps to relieve the Reformation 
firom these odious features, that poverty, for which the state was anxious 
existed before this action of Henry. I dare say that the Dissolution aggra- 
vated the evil. It is possible that sheep-farming, rent-raising, and attempts 
to aggregate farms may have increased the mischief. But I am entirely 



4o6 

convinced that the four causes given above are amply sufficient to accoui)? 
for it " (p. 243). The four causes are : — (l) debased coinage ; (2) confis- 
cation of the guild lands ; (3) the inevitable rise in prices ; (4) Elizabeth's 
Statute of Labourers. 

"The necessity of the English Poor Law can be traced distinctively 
back to the crimes of rulers and their agents. I do not say that if those 
four causes which I have recounted had been absent, destitution would 
never have ensued ; but I am certain that it would have been more manage* 
able, the police which legal relief must in the end administer would have 
been less harsh, and the relief itself more gently given and more gratefully 
received. In a vague way the poor know that they have been robbed by 
he great in past time and are stinted now " (p. 244) . 

Lastly, in contrast to all this, Professor Rogers gives a calm judgment 
upon the state of things in the Middle Ages. " In the age which I have 
attempted to describe," he says, "and in describing which I have accumu- 
lated and condensed a vast mass of unquestionable facts, the rate of 
production was small, the conditions of health unsatisfactory, and the 
duration of life short. But, on the whole, there were none of those 
extremes of poverty and wealth which have excited the astonishment of 
philanthropists, and are now exciting the indignation of workmen. The 
age, it is true, had its discontents, and these discontents were expressed 
forcibly and in a startling manner. But of poverty which perishes un- 
heeded, of a willingness to do honest work and a lack of opportunity, there 
was little or none. The essence of life in England during the days of the 
Plantagenets and Tudors was that everyone knew his neighbour, and that 
everyone was his brother's keeper. My studies lead me to conclude that 
though there was hardship in this life, the hardship was a common lot, 
and that there was hope, more hope than superficial historians have con- 
ceived possible, and perhaps more variety than there is in the peasant''! 
lot in our time " (p. 63). 



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